points by danielmarkbruce 5 hours ago | 0 comments
Phase 1 isn't the big problem. It's phase 2 and phase 3 where drugs fail hard and the trials cost the most and take the longest.
Honestly once you go through all the details... drug discovery feels like the one of the overhyped and unlikely to work areas for AI. Other areas of medicine (like diagnosis) are already seeing pretty good results, and anecdotally seems to work well and tends to fit within the realm of text analysis where most of the AI gains have happened.
Another bigger impact might come by making regular researchers, lab workers, etc all more efficient by making data analysis more efficient or creating better tools. Possibly with less errors. That'd of course require big pharma to adopt them. We'll see on that point.