The AI-powered drug will be in testing by the end of the year, Google Hasabis said.

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Isomorphic Labs, a four-year-old drug discovery startup owned by Google parent Alphabet, will have a drug designed by artificial intelligence later this year, founder Sir Demis Hassabis said.

“We’re looking at all the big disease areas in oncology, cardiovascular, neurodegeneration, and I think we’ll have our first drug by the end of this year,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. platform.

It usually takes an average of five to 10 years to find a drug. And maybe we can accelerate that 10 times, which will be an incredible revolution in human health. ThoughtsIn October, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his colleague John Jumper and biochemist David Baker.

Isomorphic In the year In 2021, Google’s AI research arm, Google DeepMind, will be spun off, but will remain a wholly owned subsidiary of its parent company, Alphabet. The startup’s potential has attracted big pharmaceutical partners eager to cut costs and increase efficiency in the expensive drug development process.

Hassabis previously told the FT that the group was working on six drug development programs with Eli Lilly and Novartis.

Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, said in a wide-ranging interview that the search giant’s AI assistant prototype, known as Project Astra, could be rolled out to users by the end of this year. In the near future, when there will be “billions” of AIA agents, he said, there will be a need to “negotiate with each other on behalf of the provider and the customer” and rethink the web.

He also asked for more caution and coordination among leaders. AI developers Competing to build artificial general intelligence. If the technology is out of control or “by bad actors . . . for harmful ends”.

Google DeepMind’s ultimate goal is to create artificial general intelligence, or “a system that can display all the cognitive abilities that people have,” Hassabis said, adding that social media was “encouraging” that it was close, but the real AGI was. It’s still five to 10 years away.

“If something is doable and worthwhile, people will do it,” Hassabis said. “Now that we’re past that point with AI, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. . . So we have to try and make sure we deliver that to the world in as safe a way as possible.