---
title: "Scientists Now Studying AI as a Novel Biological Organism"
description: "AI scientists are starting to study AI models as if they are novel biological organisms in order to understand their inner workings."
date: "2026-01-17"
modified: "2026-01-17"
authors:
  - name: "Sharon Adarlo"
    job_title: "Correspondent"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/sadarlo"
url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-novel-biological-organism"
categories:
  - "Anthropic"
  - "Artificial Intelligence"
  - "Ethics"
  - "Future Society"
  - "OpenAI"
---

# Scientists Now Studying AI as a Novel Biological Organism

![AI scientists are starting to study AI models as if they are novel biological organisms in order to understand their inner workings.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ai-novel-biological-organism.jpg>)
*Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images*

AI models are now everywhere, from [hospitals](<https://www.sph.umn.edu/news/new-study-analyzes-hospitals-use-of-ai-assisted-predictive-tools-for-accuracy-and-biases>) to [churches](<https://www.axios.com/2025/11/12/christian-ai-chatbot-jesus-god-satan-churches>).

The astonishing thing is that even AI experts still don't know exactly what's happening inside these [black box](<https://umdearborn.edu/news/ais-mysterious-black-box-problem-explained>) models, even as they're being deployed in the [highest-stakes settings imaginable](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/experts-ai-nuclear-weapons>).The latest strategy to figure it out: studying them like biological systems.

For example, [*MIT Tech Review* reports](<https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/12/1129782/ai-large-language-models-biology-alien-autopsy/>), scientists at Anthropic have developed tools that let them trace what's happening inside models as they perform a task, a type of study called mechanistic interpretability — which resembles [how doctors use MRIs](<https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/brain-mri/about/pac-20582237>) to study brain activity, another type of intelligence we don't quite understand yet.

"This is very much a biological type of analysis," Josh Batson, a research scientist at Anthropic, told *Tech Review*. "It’s not like math or physics."

In another experiment that resembles how biologists use [organoids](<https://www.hsci.harvard.edu/organoids>), which are miniature versions of human organs, the magazine reports that Anthropic developed a special neural network called a sparse autoencoder whose inner workings are easier to understand and analyze than regular large language models (LLMs).

Another technique is chain-of-thought monitoring, in which models explain their reasoning behind their behavior and actions — much like listening to the inner monologue of an actual person. This has helped scientists spot misaligned behavior.

"It’s been pretty wildly successful in terms of actually being able to find the model doing bad things," said Bowen Baker, OpenAI research scientist, to *MIT*.

A looming danger is that future models will become so complex — especially if they're themselves designed by AI — that we'll have effectively no idea how they work. Even now, with the current tools and techniques at our disposal, unexpected behaviors still pop up that don't align with human objectives of truthfulness and safety.

We see hard evidence of this in the news, which is littered with [reports of people harming themselves](<https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-suicide-openai-gpt4o>) because AI told them to — which makes it even more disturbing that we still don't quite understand how they function.

**More on AI:** *[Indie Developer Deleting Entire Game From Steam Due to Shame From Having Used AI](<https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/indie-developer-deleting-entire-game-ai>)*