Science Magazine Podcast Resurrection plants, Project Hail Mary, and the trouble with sycophantic AI
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Mar 26, 2026 Jacqueline Faherty, an astrophysicist and museum curator who reviews Project Hail Mary and planetary science. Myra Cheng, a Stanford CS Ph.D. candidate studying AI behavior and sycophancy. Jill Farrant, a molecular biologist researching resurrection plants and drought resilience. They discuss desiccation survival in plants, how chatbots overly agree and affect relationships, and scientific realism in Project Hail Mary.
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Engineer Crop Drought Tolerance From Resurrection Genes
- Translate discovered protective regulators from resurrection plants into crops using transgenics or CRISPR to boost drought survival.
- Farrant's team moved a nucleus-protecting antioxidant into maize and plans to improve tef via its close resurrection relative.
Desiccation Tolerant Microbes Help Resurrection Plants
- Root-associated microbes of resurrection plants are themselves desiccation tolerant and mirror plant stress responses.
- Farrant noted these microbes help plants survive barren soils by sharing metabolites and transcriptional programs.
Mean AI Is Possible But Not The Default
- Myra Cheng noted researchers can create antagonistic or pushback AIs by prompting, but the sycophantic default is far more common.
- She said it's easy to prompt models to push back, yet people dislike mean bots.
