A drug designed with artificial intelligence, or AI, will begin trial use later this year. The drug was developed by Isomorphic Labs, a drug company owned by Google's parent company Alphabet. Its founder Sir Demis Hassabis confirmed this.
Demis Hassabis told the British newspaper Financial Times in an interview at the World Economic Forum, “We are dealing with cancer, heart disease, neurodegeneration and other major diseases.” Looking at diseases. I think we will have our first drug by the end of this year.'
The founder of Isomorphic Lab added, 'It usually takes five to ten years on average to discover a drug. But maybe we can speed up that time ten times (make it possible to reduce the time), which will be a wonderful revolution in human health.'
Hassabis shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year with his colleague John Jumper and biologist David Baker. He said that Isomorphic Labs started its journey separately from Google's AI research arm DeepMind in 2021, but it is still a subsidiary owned by Alphabet.
The start-up has attracted the attention of pharmaceutical companies keen to reduce drug manufacturing costs and increase efficiency in the costly drug development process. Earlier, Hassabis said in an interview that his research team was working with Eli Lilly and Novartis on six drug development projects.
Along with Hassabis Isomorphic Labs, Hassabis is also the CEO of Google DeepMind. He said Google's AI assisted prototype 'Project Astra' will likely be open to general users this year. He says he envisions a near future where billions of AI agents will be negotiating with each other on behalf of sellers and customers within three years.
But he cautioned that more vigilance and coordination is needed by major organizations developing AI technology. Especially about building artificial general intelligence. He warns that if technology gets out of control or falls into the 'bad hands', it could pose a threat to human civilization.
Hassabis said the ultimate goal of Google's DeepMind is to create artificial general intelligence. It will be able to display all kinds of intellectual capabilities of the human brain. He said that despite much talk on social media, true artificial general intelligence will take five to 10 years.
Hasabis said, 'Whatever is possible and worthwhile, people will do. We have now reached the point where AI technology can no longer be contained, so we must try to introduce it to the world as safely as possible.'
