Drug Discovery Has No Magic Wands

a16z · 3 weeks ago · 35

Daphne Koller argues that AI's promise to cure disease through superintelligence overlooks a critical bottleneck: we lack sufficient understanding of human biology to identify which disease mechanisms are worth targeting. While AI has excelled at molecular design (stage 2 of drug discovery), over 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials because researchers target the wrong biological mechanisms, not because molecules are poorly designed. Real progress requires massive new biological measurement efforts and human clinical data, which no amount of computational optimization can replace, making the current industry focus on better molecular design tools largely misguided.