A half-century ago, scientists and lawyers agreed to strict self-regulation in DNA research to avoid catastrophe. Can A. I. follow the same model? Biologists and biochemists gathered at the Asilomar Conference in February 1975.

From left, Maxine Singer, Norton Zinder, Sydney Brenner and Paul Berg. Credit... Alamy Sept. 23, 2026 Updated 9:57 a.m. ET We have been here before.

Scientists warn that a promising technology might instead wipe out humanity. Its creators sound the alarm; others warn that slowing down risks losing the race to innovate. It was 51 years ago, and 150 people assembled in the chapel at Asilomar, a rustic conference center on the Monterey Peninsula in California, to address the dangers of recombinant DNA, a discovery only a few years old.

Scientists for the first time could combine bits of DNA from different organisms, creating new hybrids that could potentially cure diseases, but that might also unleash virulent new ones. In that case, scientists did pause and come together to self-regulate how they could safely proceed. The group included the nation’s leading biologists, but also lawyers.

The rules that they created did not shut down innovation. Instead, they created the biotechnology industry as we know it. Asilomar, as the gathering became known, took on such a mythic status in the relationship of science to society that leading A.

I. scientists gathered in the same place in 2017 to try to set guardrails for the development of their new models. That meeting produced vague pledges, but now A. I. leaders are again sounding the alarm, facing liability and public fears, and asking again for regulation.

And the controversies of 50 years ago — not only the one at Asilomar but also those that came after — still offer lessons. “There are so many echoes,” said Luis Campos, a historian of science at Rice who organized a recent 50th anniversary symposium on the recombinant DNA controversy in Cambridge, Mass., where participants drew parallels with artificial intelligence. “It’s almost as if the same exact words or phrases are being used.”.