(The Atlantic) – I’ve spent recent weeks speaking with scientists and executives at universities, major companies, and research institutions—including Pfizer, Moderna, and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center—in an attempt to understand what the technology can (and cannot) do to advance their work. There’s certainly a lot of hyperbole coming from the AI companies: Even if, tomorrow, an OpenAI or Google model proposed a drug that appeared credibly able to cure a single type of cancer, the medicine would require years of laboratory and human trials to prove its safety and efficacy in a real-world environment, which AI programs are nowhere near able to simulate. “There are traffic signs” for drug development, “and they are there for a good reason,” Alex Zhavoronkov, the CEO of Insilico Medicine, a biotech company pioneering AI-driven drug design, told me. (Read More)