{"podcast":{"title":"Ion Genomics Podcast","slug":"ion-genomics-podcast-7831901","podcast_index_feed_id":7831901,"rss_url":"https://api.riverside.com/hosting/bjJ8IM8g.rss","website_url":"www.iongenomics.bio","image_url":"https://hosting-media.riverside.com/media/podcasts/33a5b670-e982-44e8-9d9e-9861ff1bad6b/logos/36dbc099-5e7f-409e-9b79-08546d4716e4.png","author":"Andrew P. Han","episode_count":13,"summary":"Ion Genomics brings you in-depth but also wide-ranging conversations with leading figures in genomic science and technology. Hosted by veteran science journalist Andrew P. Han, the Ion Genomics Podcast is a weekly window into the latest advances driving exploration of human biology. For more science and business news, check out www.iongenomics.bio and subscribe to the newsletter.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-26T00:18:21.685943+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901"},"episode":{"title":"How Well Do AI Models Understand Wet Lab Work? With Benchling’s Nicholas Larus-Stone","slug":"how-well-do-ai-models-understand-wet-lab-work-with-benchling-s-nicholas-larus-stone","published_at":"2026-09-18T11:20:53+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/how-well-do-ai-models-understand-wet-lab-work-with-benchling-s-nicholas-larus-stone","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901","url":"https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/186114156465602913652c40966097d46111ef58bd78f49783407873e187149c/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiIzZDA4MzdhMi1mNGZlLTRkMDgtYTJlYy0wZGUzY2NhZDY3NTYiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiIzM2E1YjY3MC1lOTgyLTQ0ZTgtOWQ5ZS05ODYxZmYxYmFkNmIiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OWIzMTk0ZDExZTc3MTlhNjFmZmRmNTYiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNmFhZDFiZTFhMDIzYzhlYTA3MWVmZjg3L2FuZHJldy1oYW5zLXN0dWRpby1HZ25NUy0yMDI2LTktMThfXzExLTktMjIubXAzIn0=.mp3","audio_url":"https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/186114156465602913652c40966097d46111ef58bd78f49783407873e187149c/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiIzZDA4MzdhMi1mNGZlLTRkMDgtYTJlYy0wZGUzY2NhZDY3NTYiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiIzM2E1YjY3MC1lOTgyLTQ0ZTgtOWQ5ZS05ODYxZmYxYmFkNmIiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OWIzMTk0ZDExZTc3MTlhNjFmZmRmNTYiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNmFhZDFiZTFhMDIzYzhlYTA3MWVmZjg3L2FuZHJldy1oYW5zLXN0dWRpby1HZ25NUy0yMDI2LTktMThfXzExLTktMjIubXAzIn0=.mp3","summary":"Nicholas Larus-Stone is Benchling’s Head of AI and coauthor of a new benchmarking study putting large language models (LLMs) like Claude and ChatGPT to work redesigning wet lab protocols. The models did just fine, but didn’t blow the Benchling team away. “They can certainly be helpful at certain biological tasks, but they've by no means solved some of the kind of biology problems that people really care about,” Larus-Stone said. That said, he believes that pharmaceutical companies should be spending more on AI usage. That’s just one of several spicier takes we got into in our conversation. Listen for more of Larus-Stone’s thoughts on why benchmarking LLMs is important, how open-source models can be competitive against proprietary ones, how he has fostered cross-pollination between software engineers and scientists by founding Bits in Bio, and whether he likes the term “TechBio.” Show Notes Benchling’s Bench-Bench protocol study white paper Benchling blog post about the benchmarking study Bits in Bio Website Bits in Bio 2025 Annual Report Other AI benchmarking studies From Jure Lescovec’s lab and the Biomni team : Qu et al . “BiomniBench: Process-level Evaluation of LLM Agents for Real-world Biomedical Research” bioRxiv . May 12, 2026. Guo et al. “PromptBio-Bench: Benchmarking LLM-based Bioinformatics Agents for End-to-End Data Analysis.” BioRxiv . June 1, 2026. Other podcast episodes referenced https://www.iongenomics.bio/p/ai-agents-are-coming-for-the-lab","meta_description":"Nicholas Larus-Stone is Benchling’s Head of AI and coauthor of a new benchmarking study putting large language models (LLMs) like Claude and ChatGPT to wo…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3084,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/episodes/how-well-do-ai-models-understand-wet-lab-work-with-benchling-s-nicholas-larus-stone/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/how-well-do-ai-models-understand-wet-lab-work-with-benchling-s-nicholas-larus-stone.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}