Mike Auerbach, Editor In Chief
[email protected]
Does anyone remember the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence?
Released in 2001 and starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor, the movie tells the story of a time in the future where the polar ice caps have melted (hmmm, very prescient) and humans have moved to the center of continents and have created highly advanced robots called “mechas” to serve them.
Osment plays David, the first robot with real feelings, who was adopted by a family whose real son is stricken by an incurable disease and was frozen until a cure could be found. Once the real son comes back, conflict ensues.
IMDB.com, one of the great online resources for all things related to movies and television, says the budget for this movie was estimated to be $100M, and the box office gross for the U.S. and Canada was a bit under $79M.
Ouch, that’s a bit of a loss.
IMDB does, however, also note that the total gross worldwide for the movie is about $236M, no doubt due to rentals, streaming services, etc. So, I guess everyone went home happy.
I mention this movie because as I write this the pharmaceutical industry is beginning to embrace the promise of artificial intelligence technologies, as a means to get products to market faster and with less human interaction.
Luckily it doesn’t involve any human-looking robots.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the industry’s use of artificial intelligence. The double-whammy of a shrinking workforce and pressure to get drugs out faster has forced the industry’s hand and the use of artificial intelligence has stepped in to fill the gap.
In this issue alone, we have articles that talk about the use of artificial intelligence to accelerate research and development, how artificial intelligence is being used to optimize clinical data; and how data analysis is being used to automate and accelerate many time-consuming tasks.
At this point, the only thing holding back the widespread adoption of these technologies is cost.
My prediction is, just like the movie, there will be an initial large investment, a period where the balance sheet runs red, then a time when the investment pays off.
Rest assured; I don’t think we will be seeing any robots with feelings analyzing spreadsheets.
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