Black Box Biotech 2/2

Five experts raise red flag ahead of 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16 CBD) - Jim Thomas, Florian Rabitz, Ossama Abdelkawy, Lim Li Ching and Guy Kastler - each voicing the urgent need to address AI-Biotech convergence and its impact on CBD ecological and socio-economic objectives.
Link to homepage & transcript: gpenewsdocs.co...
and to Part 1 gpenewsdocs.co...
Black Box Biotech Part 2 Notes
As introduced in Part 1, Black Box Biotech, a new report on Generative Biology was published September 3 and followed by an online webinar on September 12th. produced and arranged by the African Centre for Biodiversity, Third World Network and ETC Group respectively.
The report and briefing serve as timely briefings in the lead up to the 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 16 of the CBD) to be held in Cali, Columbia from 21 Oct to 1 Nov. The report and briefing underscore the importance of understanding the governance challenges created by generative biology-the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with synthetic biology.
This segment serves as a reference doc of content presented by the five featured speakers in order of appearance: Jim Thomas (as featured in Black Box Biotech Part 1), Florian Rabitz, Ossama Abdelkawy, Lim Li Ching and Guy Kastler. The briefing was moderated the African Centre for Biodiversity’s Sabrina Masinjila.
Timeline roughly as follows:
Jim Thomas……………………….IN 01:15:00
Florian Rabitz…………………… IN 22:00:00
Ossama Abdelkawy…………..IN 32:00:00
Lim Li Ching……………………....IN 38:00:00
Guy Kastler……………………..…..IN 54:00:00
Sources and credits: Video and presentation materials courtesy the African Centre for Biodiversity
BIOs
Sabrina Masinjila: The Black Box Biotech briefing moderator Sabrina Masinjila, has worked as a research and advocacy officer for the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) for the past decade, with a focus on biosafety, seed systems and agricultural biodiversity. Based in Tanzania, she serves as a connection to East African work.
Jim Thomas: Writer, researcher, and strategist, Jim Thomas (Scan The Horizon ), formerly with ETC Group, has long tracked new trends, emerging futures and developments on the policy horizon in technology, biodiversity, food and justice. He was a member of the Multidisciplinary Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (mAHTEG) on Synthetic Biology.
Florian Rabitz is a chief researcher in the Research Group Civil Society and Sustainability at Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, and a professor at the Institute of Political Science and International Relations of Vilnius University. He focuses on emerging technologies in global environmental politics. He wrote Transformative Novel Technologies and Global Environmental Governance and The Global Governance of Genetic Resources and has co-chaired the CBDs mAHTEG on synthetic biology 2023-2024.
Prof. Dr. Ossama Abdelkawy, senior scientist, Department of Labeled Compounds, Hot Laboratories Center, Atomic Energy Authority, Egypt
Lim Li Ching is a senior researcher at international policy research and advocacy NGO, Third World Network (TWN) and a co-chair of IPES-Food.
Guy Kastler is an organic farmer and founding member of the French Peasant Seed Network, Confédération Paysanne. He is a member of the European Coordination of La Via Campesina (LVC), focusing on issues related to seeds and GMOs, and represents LVC as a stakeholder in numerous ITPGRFA (International Treaty on Genetic Resources in Food and Agriculture) and CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) meetings.
*Black Box Biotech briefing overview & agenda
OVERVIEW
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has for 30 years governed new developments in biotechnology in the frame of precaution and justice and has also recently established a process of technology horizon scanning, assessment and monitoring of new developments. Now there is an industrial attempt to converge next-generation genetic engineering tools (synthetic biology) with generative AI (of the sort used by ChatGPT) in a new “generative biology” industry.
On the agenda of the Black Box Biotech briefing was:
Why the Convention on Biological Diversity’s expert group propose an urgent assessment of this newest AI-biotech convergence
How the use of generative AI in biology brings thorny new problems stemming from the opaque and error-prone ‘black box’ character of AI
How the world’s largest digital tech companies (including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and NVIDIA) are fueling a ‘generative biology rush’ including a bold biopiracy grab of all the world’s digital sequence information on genomic resources.
What can be done at COP16th in Cali, Columbia?