Tech Giants Race to Revolutionize Medicine Using AI

Dr. Google will see you now. While it may not have spent four years in med school, it’s likely read through more scientific material than any other doctor in the world.

Google’s AI chatbot Med-PaLM 2 has achieved a 92.6% accuracy when answering medical questions — just under the 92.9% score from human medical professionals.

• Still, AI Now Institute’s managing director says it isn’t sufficient for commercial use yet.
• In the past, a Google research scientist found that Med-PaLM could “hallucinate” and refer to non-existent studies.

While past AI efforts have failed to yield much return (yes, you, IBM Watson), recent AI breakthroughs have tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, racing to commercialize AI in healthcare. But there’s another race we’re watching closely…

Using AI to find the next blockbuster drug

This week, AI chipmaker Nvidia placed their bet — investing $50M into AI drug discovery platform Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:RXRX) — sending its stock up 78%.

Drugmakers are already benefiting from using AI to discover new drugs. And in the process, AI is speeding up and reducing the cost of the long and expensive drug development process.

• Between 2015 and 2022, the cumulative investment in AI drug development has risen from under $1B to $24.6B.
• In the next decade, Morgan Stanley expects AI will help develop an additional 50 drugs with an extra $50B in sales.

Following Nvidia’s investment, other AI drug discovery platforms rose on the news, including Exscientia (NASDAQ:EXAI), AbCellera Biologics (NASDAQ:ABCL) and Relay Therapeutics (NASDAQ:RLAY).

Recursion has five drugs, and Exscientia has three drugs discovered with AI, which are already in human trials. And within the startup sector, AI drug discovery has quickly become one of the hottest markets for investment.