For the first time ever, a human drug has been created entirely by artificial intelligence (AI). This news comes from a team at Flinders University in Australia, who claims to have created an enhanced influenza vaccine using an AI program known Search Algorithm for Ligands (SAM). Though computers have been used to make drugs before, this was the first time it was done independently by an AI system. The researchers described this drug as a flu vaccine with an added compound that better stimulates the human immune system. This addition causes more antibodies to be formed against the flu virus than with the traditional vaccination, increasing the vaccine's efficacy.

A team of researchers at Flinders University in South Australia has created a vaccine that is considered to be the first human drug to be fully designed by artificial intelligence. Drugs have been previously designed with the help of computers. However, this vaccine was independently designed by an AI software known as SAM or Search Algorithm for Ligands. Nikolai Petrovsky, professor at Flinders University who also led the development said that its name has been derived from the task it was assigned to perform which was searching the universe for all possible compounds for a good human drug also known as a ligand. Petrovsky, also a Research Director for an Australian company, Vaxine added that the AI software was first taught about the set of compounds which activate the immune system in human beings and a set of compounds which do not.

A team at Flinders University in South Australia has developed a new vaccine believed to be the first human drug in the world to be completely designed by artificial intelligence (AI). While drugs have been designed using computers before, this vaccine went one step further being independently created by an AI program called SAM (Search Algorithm for Ligands). Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky who led the development told Business Insider Australia its name is derived from what it was tasked to do: search the universe for all conceivable compounds to find a good human drug (also called a ligand). "We had to teach the AI program on a set of compounds that are known to activate the human immune system, and a set of compounds that don't work. The job of the AI was then to work out for itself what distinguished a drug that worked from one that doesn't," Petrovsky said, who is also the Research Director of Australian biotechnology company Vaxine.

The flu vaccine is getting a boost from AI. The flu vaccine isn't perfect, but Australian scientists are trying to make it work better. Researchers at Flinders University in South Australia have developed a way to use artificial intelligence to create a "turbocharged" flu vaccine. A vaccine created with the computer program -- Smart Algorithms for Medical Discovery, or Sam for short -- started clinical trials in the US about a week ago, Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky said in an email to CNET. Petrovsky told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Sam can be trained and can then learn to create new drugs.