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There are lots of startups creating labs that can be managed e2e by agents. That will connect reasoning to the physical world and dramatically speed up the plan, experiment, reflect loop beyond what humans currently do in science R&D.

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Maybe. Maybe not. Look at AI drug design - it's not really speeding up the important part - drug trials. There isn't really a coherent plan to use AI for the most complex part of drug discovery at all.

I work in pharma and I've advocated for directly training models that predict drug trial outcomes. I don't think we have the necessary support (data + algorithms) to produce accurate models in this space. I suspect that predicting drug trial outcomes is roughly isomorphic to understanding human biology at a fundamental level (and accepting that our existing models of how drugs work are extremely limited).

Agree, it is effectively understanding human biology - which we suck at, have little data on, have few good models for.

So, it doesn't appear there is any way to avoid the clinical trial process. And it won't speed up, and it won't get cheaper.

Am I wrong?

Science is more than just drugs

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