Welcome to this week's edition of The Weekly Briefing!
Where we break down the commercial stories law students should actually be paying attention to.
Anthropic Pivots to Appeal to Scientists. But Why?
On Tuesday, Anthropic announced Claude Science, an AI agent built for scientists. It boasts many use cases such as visualising 3D structures and creating literature reviews. Currently, Claude Science is in public beta to Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise users. It may shock users to discover that Claude Science runs on the same 4.8 Opus model available to most users. All Claude Science does is aggregate the vast range of software scientists use in their day-to-day into one dashboard. So why go through all that trouble for a glorified Microsoft 365 for scientists?
One possibility is competitive urgency. While DeepMind was the pioneer with AlphaFold, almost every major AI company now has a life-sciences service (OpenAI released GPT Rosalind just a few months ago). And considering the swathes of money life-science companies have gained recently - Eli Lilly has a trillion-dollar evaluation - it would be unwise for Anthropic to not jump on the metaphorical bandwagon. Services like Claude Science aim to collapse the time taken for research, so that the development can happen sooner. We have already begun to see the fruits of this. Drug discovery usually happens over the course of years, but over 170 AI drugs have been pumped out into clinical trials in a matter of months, boasting significantly higher efficiency than their traditional alternatives.
With the barrier to entry essentially being destroyed by AI, many worry this technology may be used by bad actors for bioweaponry. However, this is unlikely for a few reasons:
- The Biological Weapons Convention bans the development, production, acquisition, transfer, storage and use of bioweapons.
- Last month, many AI CEOs signed a letter to the American Congress urging the government to create laws that would (among other things) require buyers of biological materials such as DNA to be verified.
- There are already guardrails in place to prevent those not affiliated with a university or life-science company buying biological materials from well-known providers.
Anthropic is due to go public before the end of the year, and the success of its many services (including Claude Science) will determine how Anthropic is perceived by potential investors.
How the UK is Hiking its Own Energy Prices With Bombs (Again)
On the night of the 4th of July, Ukraine struck a major oil terminal in St Petersburg, Russia. While the exact damage is not known, Kyiv claims that 43% of Russia’s oil refining capacity has been “disabled” as a result of continued attacks on Russian infrastructure. Although Britain does not rely on Russian oil directly, Russian crude (unrefined oil) is sold across the world, including countries where Britain does import its oil from, for example China.
Britain attempted to ban Russian crude products this year, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz drove up fuel prices, prompting the government to release a watered-down version of the ban. The ban will come back into effect on the 1st of January 2027. Although banning the use of any Russian crude products is well-intentioned, the British government is still indirectly increasing fuel prices by arming Ukraine. As Ukraine reduces Russia’s capacity to make crude, Russia will export less crude. This means that countries that don’t rely on Russian crude can hike their prices due to a smaller supply. British energy is a mix of Russian and non-Russian crude, meaning that while supply won’t dry up completely, there will be less oil, and it will be the UK’s fault.
While arming Ukraine may prevent Russia from challenging NATO, it is also exacerbating fuel instability for British citizens.
Thank you for reading this week's Weekly Briefing.
We'll be back next week with more stories future lawyers should be paying attention to.