Eric Horvitz

Recently, IDT Scientist Adam Clore helped detect AI-designed protein sequences that could be biosecurity threats. The results of the study, led by @microsoft.com CSO @erichorvitz.bsky.social are now published in @science.org.

💻Read more in @technologyreview.com: idtb.io/3bfxmf

Paraphrasing a protein is like paraphrasing a sentence—the words change, but the meaning holds. Microsoft scientists applied this concept to toxic proteins, revealing a blind spot in DNA screening and leading a cross-sector team to develop a fix. msft.it/6010s4tW8

We enjoyed working with Adam Clore and his colleagues at @idtdna.bsky.social

Call for Proposals // Laude Moonshots Laude Moonshots support computer science researchers taking big, urgent swings in AI

Call for moonshots. First phase: abstracts due on Oct 25, 2025. moonshots.laude.org/call-for-pro...

How do we decide what not to share?
I explore “information hazards” in this blog--on when openness in science risks misuse. Paraphrase effort led to a first-of-its-kind publishing model, accepted by Science: "When AI Meets Biology" aka.ms/AAy56z3 Full paper on the project avail here: aka.ms/AAy5e9c

Background and resources on the Paraphrase Project, published in Science last week, with some of the behind-the-scenes story, my blog on the disclosure dilemma, and a conversation with Bruce Wittman, Tessa Alexanian, and James Diggans. @msftresearch.bsky.social

Full paper at: aka.ms/AAy5e9c

Federal research funding works. It’s not an expense–it’s an investment. It’s not overhead–it’s a down payment on the future. - Eric Horvitz, Margaret Martonosi, Moshe Y. Vardi, and James Larus in CACM cacm.acm.org/opinion/keep... @erichorvitz.bsky.social

Study on clinician-AI collaboration: "As LLMs now demonstrate expert-level diagnostic performance, the focus shifts from whether AI can offer valuable suggestions to how it can be effectively integrated into the diagnostic workflow..." Many opportunities ahead.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

I’m looking forward to the 2025 RAISE Health Symposium at Stanford University, hosted by @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social and the @stanfordhai.bsky.social. Symposium explores the today's health AI, what’s coming next, and directions forward. More here: med.stanford.edu/raisehealth/...

Chatbots Decoded Interview: Eric Horvitz YouTube video by Computer History Museum

Conversation with the Computer History Museum on the trajectory of AI through time, on where we are today, and on directions heading into the future. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddjN...
@computerhistory.bsky.social

Code avail for paper, "Improving Instruction-Following in Language Models through Activation Steering" at #ICLR2025. Exciting to see influence of computed vectors across models.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2410.12877
Repo: github.com/microsoft/ll...
@alestolfo.bsky.social @besmiranushi.bsky.social

AI Index 2025: State of AI in 10 Charts | Stanford HAI Small models get better, regulation moves to the states, and more.

The 2025 AI Index report has been published. Summary & link to full report here: hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-inde... @stanfordhai.bsky.social #AI100

What AI Means for the Future of Work On February 18, the Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design hosted a thought leader panel to discuss the National Academies of Sciences’s

www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/article...

Rapid and accurate prediction of protein homo-oligomer symmetry using Seq2Symm - Nature Communications Seq2Symm is a sequence-based AI model designed to predict the symmetry of protein structures composed of identical chains, known as homo-oligomers. It surpasses existing methods in accuracy and effici...

Seq2Symm is out now in @naturecomms.bsky.social! PLMs continue to be unreasonably efficient-- even for highly divergent sequences.

Meghana and Minkyung did a great job leading on this!

📄: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
💻: github.com/microsoft/se...

Just released: Report of the 2025 AAAI Presidential Panel on the Future of AI Research. Covers a selection of topics of a larger set of research directions, providing high-level glimpses. Enjoyed collaborating with colleagues on the project. Report pdf avail here:
aaai.org/wp-content/u...

aaai.org/wp-content/u...
Willl repost.

Background on our quantum computing announcement this week on progress on developing a topologically protected qubit: Here's an open version of my LinkedIn article on the nearly two-decade--long project: aka.ms/quantum_brea...

MedHELM announced: Popular benchmarks for medical challenge problems have become saturated w/ high perf. of LLMs. New set of benchmarks for evaluating performance LLMs in medicine. 31 datasets, clinically relevant tasks covering 22 subcategories.

Leaderboard: lnkd.in/gZ7CkNqc
Blog: lnkd.in/gsVQUc2P

Meeting at Asilomar 50 yrs after 1975 meeting. New issues today with fast-paced advances of AI & biology--and timeless pursuit of questions & directions on the responsibilities of scientific community. Important conversations in a beautiful setting.

NPR coverage: www.npr.org/2025/02/25/n...

Great way to catch up with colleagues on the latest innovations in AI: Poster sessions! At annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in Philadelphia.

When science & technology transcend politics: At Senate Committee hearing, Senators Maria Cantwell & Ted Cruz joined hands to showcase Microsoft’s new quantum chip that leverages discoveries at the frontiers of physics. A striking bipartisan moment. More on quantum effort: aka.ms/quantum_brea...

Sponsored Content: Harnessing the Power and Potential of AI How the U.S. can unlock the promise of AI while balancing innovation and responsibility

Top of the the year reflection. www.politico.com/sponsored/20...

Superhuman performance of a large language model on the reasoning tasks of a physician Performance of large language models (LLMs) on medical tasks has traditionally been evaluated using multiple choice question benchmarks. However, such benchmarks are highly constrained, saturated with...

Recent results on performance of 01-preview model on medical diagnosis & management challenges arxiv.org/abs/2412.10849 For additional reflections, see article on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pulse/advanc...

Surprising scene: Jug of spilled milk in front of exhibition hall at NeurIPS meeting. Great catching up with John Platt as the anomalous event unfolded. We both had our assistants at the ready.

Super excited to preprint our work on developing a Biomolecular Emulator (BioEmu): Scalable emulation of protein equilibrium ensembles with generative deep learning from @msftresearch.bsky.social ch AI for Science.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How to build the virtual cell with artificial intelligence: Priorities and opportunities Advances in AI and omics enable the creation of AI virtual cells (AIVCs)—multi-scale, multimodal neural network models that simulate molecules, cells, and tissues across diverse states. This vision outlines their design and collaborative development, promising to transform biological research through high-fidelity simulations, accelerating discoveries, and fostering interdisciplinary open science collaborations.

Perspective article in Cell, "How to build the virtual cell with artificial intelligence: Priorities and opportunities." Enjoyed the collaboration with fabulous colleagues on this perspective piece: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Toward AI-Resilient Screening of Nucleic Acid Synthesis Orders: Process, Results, and Recommendations Fast-moving advances in AI-assisted protein engineering are enabling breakthroughs in the life sciences that promise numerous beneficial applications. At the same time, these new capabilities are crea...

Identifying & mitigating an AI-enabled biosecurity vulnerability. Confidential effort on biosecurity red-teaming leads to distrib. of "patches" that bolster DNA synthesis screening. Article: aka.ms/AAtoa8e Work continues.
@msftresearch.bsky.social

Processes for seeking mutual understanding or “grounding,” adapted from psychology, are important in designs for agentic AI systems, per their complexity & potential high stakes of actions taken on behalf of users. New position paper with colleagues: tinyurl.com/mr2jr2rx @msftresearch.bsky.social

The Pritzker Prize: Honoring groundbreaking contributions at the intersection of AI and the natural sciences and engineering. Learn more and nominate here: datascience.uchicago.edu/research/ai-...

Co-organizers of inaugural AI-Bioscience Collaborative summit at National Academies. Event brought together int'l leaders in AI & biotechnology to explore bolstering sequence datasets, compute tools, resources, and to discuss key topics, including AI & biosecurity. More here: tinyurl.com/y6nwa5ze