Musings on AI Discovering Drugs

Thanks to the pandemic, the everyday person may know a lot more about the process of drug discovery than they did two (very long) years ago. Artificial intelligence is speeding up the research and discovery of drugs and treatments, leaving lots of cultural questions to be asked in the midst of innovation. 

The market for drug discovery technologies is expected to grow from $69.8 billion in 2020 to $110.4 billion by 2025, creating unprecedented speed, scale, and discovery of drugs and therapeutics from the ground up, as we highlight in our Business Bets 2022 report. 

“The massive speed of the covid vaccines roll out meant that some of us were excited about that and others were more freaked out,” said Ben Grinspan, director of cultural strategy. 

Age may play a part of this skepticism, suggested Moiketsi Thipe, junior cultural strategist. “Boomers need access to healthcare more than ever, but they are more tech skeptic than Gen Z,” Moiketsi said.

Digesting the vast abilities of AI speeds is one thing but regulations are still in place. “I used to work in healthcare as a data scientist and I can tell you that cybersecurity and review processes are always in place and the companies do care about not releasing personal health information,” said Pablo Vega-Behar, director of data science at sparks & honey. 

Our Elements of Culture associated with artificial intelligence, such as Constant Connection and Lagging Laws, highlight the need for policy makers to keep up with the speed of technology, Devri Velazquez, cultural strategist, mentioned. 

AI can do so much, but  human intelligence is always needed in the mix.

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