The speed of drug development has increased tenfold! Google claims the first AI-designed drug will enter testing by the end of the year

Google's first AI-designed drug is about to enter clinical trials, and the AI assistant prototype Project Astra is expected to be launched within the year. According to the Financial Times, Demis Hassabis, founder of Isomorphic Labs, a drug development startup under Google's parent company Alphabet, stated that the company plans to push its first AI-designed drug into clinical trials by the end of this year. "We are researching major disease areas such as oncology, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases, and we expect to launch our first drug by the end of this year." Hassabis pointed out that traditional drug development usually takes 5 to 10 years, but with AI technology, this process could be accelerated by 10 times, "This will be a huge revolution in human health." Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers commented: "We are at a moment of 'astonishing technological possibilities,' and we may see the release of new miraculous drugs like Wegovy every few years, AI is to the internet what computers are to calculators." In addition to drug development, Hassabis also revealed the latest progress on other Google AI projects. He stated that the Google AI assistant prototype Project Astra may be launched to consumers later this year. It is expected that "billions" of AI agents will emerge in the next three years, reshaping the internet architecture. Hassabis believes that, despite the hype on social media about AGI being imminent, achieving true AGI will still take 5 to 10 years. Isomorphic Labs was founded in 2021 as a spin-off from Google's AI research department DeepMind and remains fully under Alphabet. The company's potential has attracted the attention of several large pharmaceutical companies, which hope to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of the expensive drug development process through collaboration. Previously, Hassabis revealed that his team is collaborating with Eli Lilly and Novartis on six drug development projects