Silicon Valley Promises AI Will Cure Disease. Drugmaker CEOs Aren't Buying It

Re:Silicon Valley Promises AI Will Cure Disease. Drugmaker C... by fabian2k on Sunday November 08, 2026 @02:47PM (#50416448)

Solving protein structures, and specifically protein structures bound to ligands that are your potential drug candidates are very, very early phases in drug development. That is before even the phase 1 trials.

It's important work and a significant effort, but it's not where the actual difficulty in drug development lies. 90% of drugs fail after that point, and that is where you need to get better if you want to beat the current approaches.

AI also can't run drug trials faster than humans. They take a lot of time, effort and money.

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Re:Silicon Valley Promises AI Will Cure Disease. Drugmaker C... by signatoremo on Sunday November 08, 2026 @03:16PM (#50416702)

China can run drug trials much faster than in the West - [0]

Why do you think the status quo is optimal that can’t be accelerated and done at lower cost? Of course AI can’t do trials on its own.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-10-29/china-s-s...

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Re:Silicon Valley Promises AI Will Cure Disease. Drugmaker C... by stackskipton on Sunday November 08, 2026 @04:29PM (#50417494)

No, but issue with status quo is the bureaucracy and politics.

As noted in the article, it's cheaper because regulations appear to be laxer and it's possibly resulted in deaths.

Whether or not that's acceptable is political discussion, not an AI one.

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