How AI could slash the time it takes to find and develop new drugs

BenevolentTech CEO Pesenti: "What the company is doing here is not just the research but putting the drugs through the clinical trials ourselves." Pharmaceutical companies expend a lot of effort and millions of dollars developing new drugs -- and not the least of their problems is the amount of time spent researching potential advances that turn out to be a blind alley. A UK-based company believes that by the creative use of artificial intelligence, it can speed up that process by a factor of 10. BenevolentAI is using artificial intelligence tools to help it wade through millions of pages of drug research, analyse them, and come up with the most promising areas for research. The company recently appointed Jérôme Pesenti as CEO of its technology division, BenevolentTech.