“A recently published analysis by BCG found at least 75 ‘AI-discovered molecules’ have entered clinical trials with many more expected.

‘That they are now routinely going into clinical trials is a major milestone,’ says Dr Meier. The next – and ‘even bigger milestone’ – will be when they start to come out the other end.

However, Prof Deane notes that there is no definition yet of what exactly counts as an ‘AI discovered’ drug and, in all the examples to date, there has still been lots of human involvement.

There are two steps within the drug discovery process where AI is being most heavily deployed explains Dr Meier.

The first is in identifying, at the molecular level, the therapeutic target that it is intended the drug will act to correct, such as a certain gene or protein being altered by the disease in a way it shouldn’t.

While traditionally scientists test potential targets in the lab experimentally, based on what they understand of a disease, AI can be trained to mine large databases to make connections between the underlying molecular biology and the disease and make suggestions.

The second, and more common, is in designing the drug to correct the target.

This employs generative AI, also the basis of ChatGPT, to imagine molecules that might bind to the target and work, replacing the expensive manual process of chemists synthesising many hundreds of variations of the same molecule and trying them to find the optimal one.”

From BBC.

“Nvidia has launched a new platform called ‘Cosmos’ that allows researchers to simulate various realities and real-world physics. This tool generates synthetic data to train advanced robots and self-driving cars, addressing the growing need for training data as real-world footage becomes scarce.

The Cosmos platform uses multiverse simulation to predict every possible outcome in specific scenarios. It combines advanced machine learning techniques to create vast amounts of artificial video footage, which can be used for training AI systems more efficiently and safely.

Nvidia aims to make this technology accessible to all developers by offering the world foundation models under open-source licensing.”

From News Minimalist.

“An international team of scientists announced Thursday they’ve successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet, penetrating nearly 2 miles (2.8 kilometers) to Antarctic bedrock to reach ice they say is at least 1.2 million years old.

Analysis of the ancient ice is expected to show how Earth’s atmosphere and climate have evolved. That should provide insight into how Ice Age cycles have changed, and may help in understanding how atmospheric carbon changed climate, they said.”

From Associated Press.

“The world’s most powerful supercomputer was officially dedicated in California Thursday, with the CEOs of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and AMD on hand to celebrate their handiwork.

Why it matters: El Capitan — as the $600 million supercomputer is known — will handle an array of classified tasks aimed at securing the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons and conducting a variety of other unspecified simulations…

El Capitan is capable of peak performance of 2.79 exaflops, or 2.79 quintillion calculations per second.

That’s equivalent to the processing power of about 1 million of today’s high-end smartphones working simultaneously.”

From Axios.