Inside the Drama Behind a Biology Contest That Pits OpenAI Agents Against Humans

For months, Jason Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, has been planning what was billed as a fun, attention-grabbing science competition. His idea was to pit a top scientist against OpenAI’s latest models in designing a variety of proteins using a technique in which they are grown in test tubes faster than they would be in cells. Kelly’s company, which builds autonomous labs, would supply the venue—a 15,000-square-foot, robot-filled lab at its Boston headquarters. Ginkgo executives would serve as judges of the three-round contest.

Michael Jewett, a renowned Stanford University professor and an expert in that technique, known as cell-free protein synthesis, had agreed to go up against OpenAI. OpenAI’s team, meanwhile, would consist only of AI agents. Jewett would also be permitted to use AI, reflecting the reality that it is already integrated into many labs. He could use any commercially available AI model; OpenAI would have access to its own most advanced, unreleased AI. When Ginkgo initially shared notes with me about the proposed project, it even had a catchy name: “Mike Versus the Machines.”

The showdown was intended to generate the kind of excitement and frisson that comes when humans go up against a new technology—akin to world chess champion Gary Kasparov taking on IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in 1997 or Go champion Lee Sedol playing Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo in 2016. (In both those cases, of course, the humans lost.) Hoping to capture a striking moment in the history of biology, Ginkgo had hired a documentary film crew to record the action.

But in the past few weeks, something odd has happened. Plans for the contest have morphed. Shortly before the two sides were supposed to square off for the first time on Sept. 14, Ginkgo postponed the event. For a moment, I thought the company might cancel it entirely. Then, earlier this week, I was told the competition is back on, but the “Mike Versus the Machines” concept has been scrapped.