Harris Dalal

attempts more than failures

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

@RyanJunejo imo a markdown table in GitHub will almost always be slower than a database (but it’s fine if u are doing sequential handoffs, not running a dozen plus agents and u value readable git history over throughput)

[Dario Amodei @DarioAmodei]

Today we announced the Claude-led discovery of a molecular machine that we suspect could represent a new gene editing mechanism. Its precise function, biotechnological utility (if any), or level of significance is not yet clear, but at minimum it is work I would have been proud to do as a PhD student. The work was done mostly, though not entirely, by Claude: our life sciences team suggested a broad area of research, Claude read through the literature and a bunch of genome data and discovered something interesting, then Claude proposed experiments to verify the discovery and our team carried them out.

It’s easy to dismiss this as a one-off or curiosity, but we’ve repeatedly seen a pattern where AI performance in new intellectual domains goes from weak to superhuman in a matter of a few years. In 2023 models struggled to do math at the level of an average high-school student. In 2024 they started to do well on math competitions for the best high-schoolers in the country, in 2025 they started to solve minor open problems, in early 2026 more significant open problems, and in late 2026 they are beginning to solve the top few open problems in all of mathematics. We believe AI for biology is on a similar exponential trend.

The main difference between biology and mathematics, of course, is that math can be done purely theoretically, while biology requires experimentation. Some have used this to draw the conclusion that AI’s utility in biology will be limited. We think this is wrong. As we’ve demonstrated today, humans can collaborate with AI to perform the experiments, validate key results in a few weeks and, if necessary, work with the AI to iterate on what they find. Eventually it may even be possible for Claude itself to safely perform the experiments by autonomously controlling lab equipment, with appropriate safeguards in place, but we aren’t doing that today (our lab is also a BSL1/BSL2 facility that doesn't handle materials dangerous to humans).

More broadly, biomedical advancement has many stages — from fundamental biology discoveries, to translational research, to drug discovery, clinical trials, and finally the actual delivery of medicines and health care to patients. We are also interested in these later stages, but even simply accelerating the first stage of fundamental biological discoveries has the potential to speed up and broaden the entire pipeline. Improving our understanding of biology and sharpening biologists’ tools can drive forward all of the later stages, for example by identifying new drug targets, finding new therapeutic modalities, allowing for more precise measurement, and speeding up the experimental loop which itself further accelerates our understanding of biology. This will not in itself speed up clinical trial times, but if it succeeds it could greatly increase the number of promising candidates that go into the pipeline — an increase in throughput even though latency remains.

In Machines of Loving Grace, I wrote about AI’s potential to “cure most diseases in 5-10 years” — a goal that sounds impossible, but one I believe is just barely possible if AI is applied to every stage of the pipeline. The first step is showing that AI can first help with, and then drive, biological discoveries.

Claude’s discovery is the latest in a line of related prior work that goes back decades, beginning with systems like CRISPR, and continuing with discoveries like the bridge recombinase and VIPR in the past few years. Recently, there has been heightened interest in systems based on reverse transcriptase (RT) enzymes, the enzyme underlying the system Claude identified. And most recently, a Stanford team working independently described a novel RT system with an associated non-coding array that is in some ways similar to the one Claude found, though they are distinct systems that evolved independently from each other. I believe that we’re at the very beginning of finding such systems and developing them into powerful tools for biotechnology.

I’m proud of the resources Anthropic has invested in accelerating the public benefits of AI through the life sciences, and we’re aiming both to grow our life sciences team and to work with other scientists to extend this approach to a broad range of problems. If you have a proposal for a research collaboration or are interested in joining our life sciences team, please reach out.

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

avg day of a “founder”

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

most underrated launch of the yr imo

[Diogo Almeida @CompleteSkeptic]

After co-inventing ChatGPT, I kept asking myself: why have superhuman chat models not led to AGI?

I’ve spent the last 2 years in stealth building a new way to train models (RLCD), and a new type of frontier AI model that we are releasing today: Jev

• 20-200x faster
• 40-400x cheaper (w/ output tokens free)
• Frontier composable intelligence optimized for decisions

AFAICT the shortest path to AI-based economic revolution

[Duolingo @duolingo]

they named a phone after me and made it bend over 😭

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

i love people

[ashe @ashebytes]

since you guys loved the exploding tesla..

I used GPT-6 Astra to create a 3D website that pulls apart the male anatomy into 2,234 modeled pieces!

we are in a renaissance of learning

[aslam @aslambeg84]

Stripe had around 50 users after 2 years.

Imagine quitting because of that.

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

@kushalbyatnal yo in ROW D whatt

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

@RyanJunejo @Kimi_Moonshot @claudeai Finally, a benchmark that matters.

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

@naval damn. 🫳🎤

[Naval @naval]

Don’t send me the report, just send me the prompt.

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

being a tech guy ain’t hard no more

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

UNPOPULAR OPINION:
startups should ALWAYS be like a raging bull

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

marketing is a reaction to a bad product

[Discord @discord]

she isn't ghosting you, dm's are down

[Zeke Hausfather @hausfath]

I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

ohh noooo @tankots. 97,415 words into one trial and you’re cutting me off?😩🥀

[Harris Dalal @harris_dalal]

@Winterrose wait this guy looks familiar

[spor @sporadica]

So interesting to overhear and speak to a bunch of young talented kids these weekend. Frankly, you can tell who’s gonna make it and who’s not, very quickly.

The earnest, excited young builders? Gonna do so well. You can just feel it. For the rest, I just really really hope they get some good guidance and figure it out, because being earnest and helpful and optimistic is gonna take them so so much farther than anything else in life and I know they have it in them. Speaking from experience.