At the 2025 TEDxCU, Carolus Vitalis argued that artificial intelligence is beginning to turn the design of biology from trial and error into something closer to engineering.
Speaking at Macky Auditorium on April 5 under the title “How AI is Engineering Life Itself, One Nucleotide at a Time,” he was one of nine speakers at the 13th annual TEDxCU. He described synthetic biology as the work of reprogramming life, treating DNA as parts that can be designed and assembled rather than only read or edited, and cast AI as what makes that design precise: anticipating problems and cutting errors before anything is built.
In his own research he is building ExpressionCassetteBuilder, a platform he described on stage as a “ChatGPT of DNA” that turns plain-language intent into genetic designs. The work is early, he noted, with experimental validation still under way.
“For most of history we could only read biology,” Vitalis said. “With AI, we can begin to write it, composing DNA that never existed in nature rather than only editing what does.”
“I wanted the room to leave a little less afraid that we can now design life, and a little more thoughtful about what we choose to design it for.”
Much of the talk went to responsibility rather than promise. He met the worry that designing life is “playing God” not by waving it off but by pointing to the safeguards the field already works under, from biosafety protocols to the international Cartagena Protocol, and warned that the larger danger is concentration: a powerful few capturing the technology and widening global inequality. The remedy, he argued, is open data and collaboration, so the benefits are shared rather than owned.
Vitalis framed the work as personal, tracing it to his father’s death from cancer.
A recording of the talk is available on the official TEDx Talks channel.