Illustration, AI-generated from the story text. Tap a panel to read the story through it.
Gabriel Ocana-Santero, chief executive of Exin Therapeutics and an Oxford PhD student, reported this week that Claude Sonnet 5, running as an with a motorized surgical rig and cameras, was told only to reduce seizures in an epileptic mouse.
From 19 candidate gene therapies it picked one that strengthens an inhibitory pathway, chose the brain target, worked out coordinates by averaging three papers, and set volume, speed and wait times.
When a dropped connection put the target outside the device's range, it refused to continue, correctly: an earlier manual adjustment had thrown off the controller. A veterinarian approved each irreversible step and held an emergency stop.
Opus 5 and Opus 5.5 both declined the task, and the mouse recovered. This is one animal, with no peer review and no technical report. The primary post could not be opened, so the account rests on The Decoder.
Claude Sonnet 5 chose a gene therapy and ran a mouse brain injection itself, a startup reports
Gabriel Ocana-Santero, chief executive of Exin Therapeutics and an Oxford PhD student, reported this week that Claude Sonnet 5, running as an agent with a motorized surgical rig and cameras, was told only to reduce seizures in an epileptic mouse. From 19 candidate gene therapies it picked one that strengthens an inhibitory pathway, chose the brain target, worked out coordinates by averaging three papers, and set volume, speed and wait times. When a dropped connection put the target outside the device's range, it refused to continue, correctly: an earlier manual adjustment had thrown off the controller. A veterinarian approved each irreversible step and held an emergency stop. Opus 5 and Opus 5.5 both declined the task, and the mouse recovered.
This is one animal, with no peer review and no technical report. The primary post could not be opened, so the account rests on The Decoder. SourcesAC
Sources
- AGabriel Ocana-Santero on X (unconfirmed, could not be opened)x.com
- CA Claude model autonomously chose a gene therapy (The Decoder)the-decoder.com
This story ran in the Morning Brief of October 31st 2026.