Claude’s scorpion binders are far from a drug, experts say

Experts told The Verge that the 17 Claude-designed proteins that bound scorpion toxins in lab tests cover the relatively easy part of drug discovery and fall far short of an antivenom. Citrini Research, which ran the experiment with Anthropic, says itself that “no experiment has yet tested whether they actually stopped the toxin working.”

The 17 came from 211 designs that Adaptyv Bio and Twist Biosciences tested. Together they bound four of the five targeted toxins, and no single protein bound more than one. Two Technical University of Denmark researchers called the results “far from a medicine and hyped” and said the novel part was the autonomous discovery process.