The convergence of AI and biotechnology advances is fast becoming one of the most serious security challenges of our time.
A recent Time magazine piece highlighted a troubling blind spot in how this risk is being governed: while policymakers and frontier AI companies have taken steps to guard against pandemic-scale bioterrorism, the broader landscape of AI-enabled biological threats, particularly at the level of state actors, is receiving far less attention than it deserves.
This is in a geopolitical context where the President of the United States and his Secretary for War are seeking to dictate that frontier AI companies make their models available for waging war without human oversight.
In the video above, Prof Nick Wilson presents our introduction to this risk space, exploring how rapidly advancing AI capabilities are lowering the barriers to biological harm, and what a more comprehensive response might look like.
The world’s jurisdictions need to rapidly address this risk and act through prevention, international agreements, outbreak surveillance, and preparation for bio-catastrophe response. New Zealand needs to join a coalition of concerned nations and step up pressure.
The 16 minute talk titled “Anticipating and Managing Threats from Artificial Intelligence and Bioweapons” was presented in August 2025.
It was part of a University of Otago webinar series titled: “Imagining Past Pandemics and Preparing for the Future”.
A PDF of the PowerPoint is available here.
Read our blog on how New Zealand might better approach the broader issue of long-term global risk resilience here.
Adapt Research Ltd 