The average drug trial is 6-7 years. In order to make better drugs, we need labeled outputs of "this worked in a trial" and (more importantly) "this did not work in a trial" (which is almost always excluded today from CROs + pharma companies). And I am using "in order to make better drugs" very loosely here. I am not saying "in order to train a model that will go from disease and person to chemistry that will work". I am saying even to have stastical helpers who can help determine if a drug should be canceled early (which is a huge help) or have its tox dose adjusted or a trial cohort segregated in a different way.

So, yes, AI is not "going to solve 90% of disease in 7 years" (quoted from article), but it's also a little ridiculous to completey shrug off not trying. The way we develop drugs today is the best we have, but it is madness. Our current methods basically equate to (very fancy/stastically rigorous) trial and error. The average drug costs $1-2b to get to market and many many years. We have to at least try to do better. This is an area where it feels like we should feel compelled to out of compassion.