r/technology • u/socoolandawesome • 11h ago
Artificial Intelligence Early progress on accelerating drug development with Claude
https://www.anthropic.com/research/early-progress-drug-development38
u/Johnny_Appleweed 10h ago
I’m a drug developer, not a tech guy, and don’t have strong opinions one way or the other on AI.
The real test of AI in drug development will be whether it increases the rate of clinical success. That hasn’t happened yet, and until it does I think the jury is out on whether AI has meaningfully changed things.
The argument is that these contributions to early discovery will lead to clinical success, and I sincerely hope they do, but it’s too early to say whether any of this matters.
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u/lolitsbigmic 9h ago
100% agree been saying this. I simplistic say we have no shortage if drug candidates the issue is the transition from in silico to in vitro to in vivo to human clinical. Unless those transition can be improved its not really going to help. We have many AI (machine learning) based methods for decades. LLM dont really anything new. Unless it runs through the literature and find a connection in two unrelated fields for a solution. That is a new capability. But once again it doesn't solve the in theory to human clinical outcomes.
It really a tech/engineering view of biology/medicine that doesn't appreciate the field difficulties. I feel i can really understand this with degrees in both chemical engineering and biochemistry. With phd bio engineering, i know that each step along from computer simulation to finally clinical success is filled with failed assumptions. Its going to take a long time to "solve" biology.
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u/citrusco 6h ago
Anthropic signed a pretty large agreement with icon clinical (CRO) and definitely is working its way through abstracted / randomized human trial data with their partnerships with pharma. They announced the acquisition of a small biotech as well, focused on muscular dystrophy I believe- but even in combination with gene sequencing data and a large pool of diverse phenotypes, predicting outcomes is damn near impossible. Maybe it has effects in inclusion / exclusion criteria- but these days investors will hype fucking anything pre IPO.
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u/citrusco 10h ago
Why do you think -almost nobody- talks about translation or in vivo / safety assessment in this space? I haven’t found a good answer. There’s endless talk of ai application in discovery, CMC, clinops and biometrics but, WoE, biological signals, pathways, PK/PD… nada…
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u/Lopsided-Ticket3813 9h ago
I work in material science and we pretty much have the same stance. The models are predicting all these things but the jury is out whether any of it will lead to novel and practical discoveries.
It has been tremendously helpful in narrowing things to take forward to experimentation so we are wasting a lot less lab time. The biggest benefit is we aren't waiting around to train models or using up our limited super computer time.
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u/mekkr_ 9h ago
It almost certainly will eventually help. Whether the person that used it would have got to the same results anyway is a question worth considering.
A lot of LLM success is just people who would have produced the same output anyway doing it via an LLM. Usually at a cost that outweighs any productivity gain imo.
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u/PoL0 10h ago
I don't want to see one of these models close to anything research related. remember that disclaimer when you use AI? that one that says it might be wrong?
we're speedrunning to idiocracy, quite literally.
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u/km3r 9h ago
AI being occasionally wrong doesn't mean it can't be useful for research. It can help create scripts and tools for navigating data. It can collect information from dozens of different papers and draw potential conclusions about the sum of their information. It can form dozens of hypothesis about a topic and set up systems to rapidly test them.
And like their human counterparts, these things should all be reviewed. Humans make mistakes, so we developed processes to minimize the impact of that. We can and are doing the same for AI systems.
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u/clintontg 10h ago
It's possible for AI to be a very useful tool for research in medicine, mathematics and such. However, it is also true that it takes up resources and can be wielded for mass surveillance, deep fakes, scams and military use. So it's possible to hold a nuanced take or to appreciate how some models and uses are beneficial while criticizing drawbacks and the lack of agency afforded to people to push back on them. It's like being angry that a knife can be used to prepare food to feed people but could also be used for a killing spree. Or that it requires resources that could be used elsewhere and factories that could pollute communities.
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u/Thistlemanizzle 9h ago
People don't want to be replaced. All the other arguments are BS. It is a sublimation of their fears into all these bizarro arguments.
From time to time, I ask: If a specific negative externality went away e.g water use, would you still be opposed? The answer is always yes. It's about something else.
I think it's dread.
Eh.
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u/clintontg 9h ago
It can be both. Not everyone wants a multi-hectare facility near them with a low pitched screech 24/7 that makes their electric bill jump up or their water pumps struggle or AI enabled cameras pointed at them forming dossiers of their entire lives. But at the same time people also don't all want to be a servile underclass hoping for some UBI from tech overlords hoarding ownership over the AI that replaced their ability to find work.
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u/Thistlemanizzle 9h ago
I am looking forward to mass discontent. I hope it will change other aspects of our system. The elites have cemented their dominance. Eventually...they start taking too much.
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u/clintontg 9h ago
Also what is so bizarro about not wanting electric bills to go up, or mass surveillance or the plethora of other issues related to AI? They seem like pretty reasonable arguments to me. Do you feel like they don't hold water because of the banality of other evils in our lives?
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u/Thistlemanizzle 9h ago
But if we start tipping these reasons over in a hypothetical what do we end up finding the real reason it's bad: People will lose their livelihoods.
Have Americans ever truly cared about water consumption? If anything it's the opposite, lawn and golf is out of control.
If no water usage, would you be opposed? We are rapidly heading there.
If the grid has substantial investment including a ton of renewables are you still opposed? That is what is happening right now.
Mass surveillance. Yeah. That one is NOT being fixed/prevented. That is going to suck.
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u/flyswithdragons 9h ago
Skipping research testing and make wild claims. Drug slop is dangerous skipping proper evaluation of drug claims.
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u/CircumspectCapybara 10h ago
"If those [AI doomers] could read, they would be extremely upset"
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u/Brox42 10h ago
Jesus Christ you shit heads. No one ever said it isn’t good at certain things. Algorithms have been good at doing things for forty years. We just don’t think it’s good at everything all the time to the point where we should spend literally all the money in the world to give four psychotic billionaires control of everything.
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u/CircumspectCapybara 10h ago
we should spend literally all the money in the world to give four psychotic billionaires control of everything
good thing nobody's doing that huh
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u/socoolandawesome 10h ago edited 10h ago
Basically this whole sub lied about how it was good at nothing up until like a few months ago, now it’s more like about half of you all lie about this to some extent.
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u/SYNTHENTICA 11h ago
This sub is for posting about how evil and useless technology is.
r/lostredditors