MIT Tech Review roundtable: AI-designed viruses with Samuel King
MIT Technology Review will host a subscriber-only online roundtable on October 16, 2026, with AI reporter James O'Donnell interviewing Samuel King, a Stanford bioengineering PhD candidate and Innovators Under 35 honoree. The listing recalls that in 2025 King used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses, noting this is not yet AI-generated life but "that could be next." The conversation will cover his work and "new ways of seeing biology."
Why it matters: The session centers on the limits of using generative AI to design biological sequences, though it is an interview event and does not present new research results.
Available only for MIT Technology Review subscribers.
Friday, October 16, 2026
Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. Join senior AI reporter James O'Donnell as he interviews King about his work, being named one of MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 and new ways of seeing biology.
Going live on October 16th at 18:30 BST / 1:30pm EDT / 10:30am PDT
Speakers: James O'Donnell, AI Reporter, and Samuel King, Bioengineering PhD Candidate, Stanford University/Arc Institute
Related Stories
- He asked an AI to design viruses … and it worked.
- AI-designed viruses are here and already killing bacteria <
Deep Dive
Artificial intelligence
Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason
Ten years after AlphaGo’s match against Go champion Lee Sedol, today’s AI still isn’t tapping into the machinery that made that win possible.
By
AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all
AI agents are not yet creative enough to carry out genuinely innovative open-ended AI research, it seems.
By
Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype
Breathless claims about AGI and new capabilities fall apart pretty quickly under scrutiny.
By
These startups are chasing the next big thing in LLMs
Meet the new kids nipping at the heels of the AI giants.
By
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.
How we got here
- Stanford's Fei-Fei Li team open-sources OpenWAM world-action framework36氪 人工智能 · Stanford University
- TPCA Show 2026 spotlights energy-efficient AI, advanced packaging科技新报 · Stanford University
- 2026 Nobel Prize honors optogenetics pioneers量子位（原生 RSS） · Stanford University
- Apple paper studies how users negotiate ontological boundaries in personal sensing systemsApple Machine Learning Research · Stanford University
- OpenAI Foundation commits billions to open health and life-science dataMIT科技评论中文 · Arc Institute