alt.hn

6/14/2026 at 2:55:36 AM

Making Claude a Chemist

 https://www.anthropic.com/research/making-claude-a-chemist

by gmays

6/14/2026 at 8:10:05 AM

If they succeed here, won't they have to gate access to this feature, too? For the same reasons as, "if I so much as mention mitochondria, it downgrades me to Opus."

Step 1. Make it so Claude can do anything — the whole point of AGI

Step 2. Wait, if the user can do Anything, that would be Very Bad!

Step 3. Err on the safe side with blanket bans of entire fields

The latter actually seems to me a sensible reaction to e.g. the compartmentalization used in the large scale cyber attack using Claude last year. Where they were able to do Bad Thing by dividing it into many, many Small, Seemingly Harmless Things.

Gated access sounds bad (and I agree it sounds bad!) but it might actually be the only sensible response to such a set of conditions. I'm not sure though.

--

I saw some studies recently which showed LLMs provide much more detailed information to expert users. So we can distinguish between competence and incompetence based on use of language, and that is a reasonable metric for harm reduction.

But I don't think we can reliably detect "user has harmful intentions", at least not at a sufficient level of sophistication of the attacker.

by andai

6/14/2026 at 8:29:10 AM

I think one time I asked opus about copyfail when it just came out and it did treat me like some sort of criminal, but are there really people that run into this on a regular basis other than cybersecurity experts (which cannot be a big enough group to generate all of this criticism)?

by NewsaHackO

6/14/2026 at 8:16:08 AM

I just wait until a Opensource model inhaled all the chemistry books and papers. Lol.

They are following closely and the best offer 80-90% of the performance and come with a very small fraction of the costs.

by MiracleRabbit

6/14/2026 at 9:15:01 AM

Why wouldn't the US gov. outlaw the open source models?

by echelon_musk

6/14/2026 at 9:27:51 AM

Streisand effect

Deepseek.v4.Pro.RePacked.LLMBoyz.part1.zstd

by MiracleRabbit

6/14/2026 at 9:48:24 AM

Much harder to ban if they can run locally

by UltraSane

6/14/2026 at 9:47:30 AM

Fable wouldn't even explain what an amino acid is.

by UltraSane

6/14/2026 at 6:21:28 AM

The non-professional side of Organic Chemistry is one place where I think AI would really shine.

Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.

But the synthesis plan is only 10% of the actual work.

The gap between writing down the synthesis step and actually doing it is also extremely large.

Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.

The Ritonavir episode of Veritasium is a great example of how all chemistry on paper is a mere shadow of what actually happens in real life.

by gopalv

6/14/2026 at 7:46:02 AM

> Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.

I remember two years ago, when I actually got into using graph data structures, wondering if maybe the "space" of available reactions for any given starter and target molecules could be mapped as a graph, with intermediates as nodes and reactions as weighted directed edges, so synthesis becomes pathfinding through chemical space.

Turns out, it’s a thing! [^0]

Edit: Makes you wonder how much interesting stuff is sitting in plain sight, waiting for someone with the right cross-domain awareness / knowledge / whatever to notice it.

[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9574932/

by ElFitz

6/14/2026 at 9:28:14 AM

There is a lot of graph theory in Chemistry - modelling chemicals as (vertex/edge coloured) graphs, reaction networks, etc.

Of course some molecules (eg aromatic systems, like ferrocene) are not naturally representable as graphs. I wonder if it is the same with synthesis - are there reactions hard to model as a graph (or petri net or whatever). One simple example I know is that you have to be careful with including a node for 'water' as it gets connected to everything else! Or at least in biochemistry it does.

by gilleain

6/14/2026 at 6:25:01 AM

> Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.

Sounds a lot like vibe coding lol

by jgilias

6/14/2026 at 6:55:39 AM

Modern biochemistry (so far) IS vibe coding lol. You mostly have vibes on how the chemistry should work, based on (very strong) natural evidence coupled with theoretical development and lab studies. Then you mix and match, goading bacteria and praying that they produce what you want in good measure. Then you take their secretions and run chromatography studies on them to check if that's what you actually want, or whether it's just some random bullshit. If it's the latter, you have to toss that out and start all over again.

by fakedang

6/14/2026 at 7:22:21 AM

At least vibe coding can only explode in your face metaphorically.

by moffkalast

6/14/2026 at 9:08:14 AM

Until vibe code is used for weapons system, or explosive manufacturers, or.. or...

The world today is coding.

by b112

6/14/2026 at 6:48:31 AM

Organic chemistry seems like a discipline better done by chemists than forward deployed staff with their payoff function sharply truncated at an IPO which at this point may or may not happen on schedule.

by reinitctxoffset

6/14/2026 at 10:29:06 AM

Are there organizations or individuals using AI to solve world problems if they are so powerful as these companies are saying?

by sudhirkhanger

6/14/2026 at 9:36:09 AM

Waiting for Claude to end up on Derek Lowe’s list of things he won’t work with

by sandermvanvliet

6/14/2026 at 5:54:59 AM

What good is it if you can't use it? Or worse, if you can but it silently sabotages you?

by matheusmoreira

6/14/2026 at 6:16:08 AM

> We measured three Claude models (Opus 4.7, Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6)

You can use those and they probably won't intentionally sabotage you.

by yorwba

6/14/2026 at 6:22:00 AM

Yeah. Probably.

by matheusmoreira

6/14/2026 at 7:17:54 AM

I feel like chemistry is one thing that current models will struggle with for the next while, because it's inherently 3D. In the micro world, shape = function. Maybe enough textual patterns will let it under chemistry, but like how do you describe a hydrogen shift without showing how it moves positions and rebalances bonds?

by smj-edison

6/14/2026 at 9:27:06 AM

I think this is a very interesting concept/question. I feel like programming is more about shapes than anything else… but they seem to have mastered that fairly easily… but I totally get your point!

by FailMore

6/14/2026 at 9:33:11 AM

Agree here, chem may be more complex than language, and not as definable as language. I think this is the realm that physical ai will overlap with.

by johncole

6/14/2026 at 5:44:09 AM

Let’s ban this before it gets too powerful !

by thefounder

6/14/2026 at 6:14:55 AM

I don't think it should be outright banned, automated intelligence is like a gun, hammer, knife, nuclear warhead, etc.

by simulator5g

6/14/2026 at 6:39:10 AM

I see that intelligence itself is a tool, but that doesn't mean I want an automated gun, automated hammer, automated nuclear warhead, etc.

by pkal

6/14/2026 at 6:56:36 AM

You may not want them, but the NRA certainly wants that you want them.

by fakedang

6/14/2026 at 7:02:15 AM

In the future perhaps it will mean "Neural Rifle Automaton"

by ben_w

6/14/2026 at 6:33:33 AM

not really, though. you don't see automated intelligence in the hands of junkies et al. ... and you don't see it coming, either ...

by tearwear

6/14/2026 at 6:54:13 AM

Junkies et al can log into chatgpt right now and use it to create a phishing email to steal drug money from your Grandma. Many people saw this coming.

by simulator5g

6/14/2026 at 6:43:47 AM

[dead]

by xaxfixho

6/14/2026 at 8:41:58 AM

I wonder if every future announcement will be met with this criticism. Like, what's the point if they'll ban it in a few days.

by ed_mercer

6/14/2026 at 9:49:31 AM

I don't really want the average LLM being able to tell anyone exactly how to syntheize lethal nerve agents.

by UltraSane

6/14/2026 at 10:36:03 AM

you can already get that information by reading books in the library.

The biggest barrier is not information, it's the ability to secure enough of the materials and equipment.

For example, information for how to make a nuclear weapon is already there in the library. However, mining enough yellow cake and then purifying it is an industrial scale operation, out of reach unless you are a nation state, and have good mountain tunnels, etc. To a lesser extent, this is also true for producing chemical weapons. The theory is there, but actual production extremely out of reach. No LLM can help you there. (You can verify by reading up on Aum Shinrikyo to get an idea of the staggering scale required)

by bouncycastle

6/14/2026 at 10:39:31 AM

> mining enough yellow cake and then purifying it is an industrial scale operation, out of reach unless you are a nation state

or a transnational (or even national scale) energy and or minerals company.

Might be hard to slip past the shareholders, but dark projects have flown under the annual reports of several large players.

by defrost

6/14/2026 at 8:31:32 AM

I guess the future is one where every idiot has access to a genius servant, and all that implies

by anentropic

6/14/2026 at 8:44:45 AM

I vote for "Claude Pinkman" as a name

by exitnode

6/14/2026 at 6:22:55 AM

inb4 someone calls Bessent to explain how this can be used in fentanyl production.

by jgilias

6/14/2026 at 9:55:39 AM

“I can’t tell you that, you might hurt yourself.”

by andrewstuart

6/14/2026 at 8:46:15 AM

[dead]

by hansmayer