Google Artificial Intelligence will be used to discover important new drugs


Google parent company Alphabet is enhancing the uses of its benchmark artificial intelligence software. Utilising its already established DeepMind AI program, Alphabet will be working on using AI to discover new pharmaceuticals.

Reported by The Verge, DeepMind’s work on AI protein prediction will fuel its upcoming pharmaceuticals research. However, this model is as-of-yet unproven in the field.

Isomorphic Laboratories will be backed by Google Artificial Intelligence

To fuel its medicinal research, Alphabet has created an entirely new company: Isomorphic Laboratories. Helmed by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, the company will use AI to help discover new medicines.

The new technique is expected to find life-changing medicines faster than anything possible by human teams. With artificial intelligence, millions of scenarios can be flicked through in record speeds without human intervention.

Isomorphic Laboratories will not create or sell medicines it discovers through AI. Instead, the discovered models will be sold to companies that wish to create and sell medicines to would-be customers.

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Faster biochemistry than ever before

The Verge reports that this tech could help with one of biochemistry’s biggest roadblocks: drugs just not working. In the outlet’s report, it’s said that “over 90 percent of drugs that make it to a clinical trial end up not working”.

However, with a faster output than ever before due to artificial intelligence, Alphabet could circumvent this issue with a massively boosted quantity of drugs. Of course, the issue is, will Alphabet’s project be for research or for profit?

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