Two Developments Highlighting Artificial Intelligence's Industry Shattering Potential

In the past few weeks, two important developments in artificial intelligence research have gone largely unheralded. Both hint at just how earth shaking – or at least industry-shattering – A.I.'s potential really is. The first item was news that a Hong Kong-based biotechnology startup, InSilico Medicine, working with researchers from the University of Toronto, had used machine learning to create a potential new drug to prevent tissue scarring. What's eye-popping here is the timescale: just 46 days from molecular design to animal testing in mice. Considering that, on average, it takes more than a decade and costs $350 million to $2.7 billion to bring a new drug to market, depending on which study one believes, the potential impact on the pharmaceutical industry is huge.