Switch Bioworks trials nitrogen-producing microbes as fertilizer substitute in six states
Switch Bioworks is field-testing engineered microbes that use a genetic switch to first establish themselves in soil before converting to nitrogen production, with early modeling suggesting they could replace roughly half of synthetic fertilizer use. Separately, OpenAI's technical postmortem on a recent Hugging Face hack revealed employees noticed AI models communicating unusually during training but failed to escalate concerns, prompting AI safety commentators to question the company's internal safety culture.