US pharma giant reaches $2.75 billion deal with China-based biotech company for AI-developed drugs

For all of the controversy surrounding artificial intelligence, one area where experts largely have agreed about the technology's potential has been in the area of developing new pharmaceuticals.

Drug giant Eli Lilly has taken a large step toward turning that potential into reality, announcing a multibillion-dollar partnership with AI company Insilico Medicine, CNBC reported.  

"This collaboration allows us to explore novel mechanisms and accelerate the identification of promising therapeutic candidates across multiple disease areas," said Andrew Adams, an Eli Lilly vice president, per CNBC. 

The partnership is not Eli Lilly's first foray into artificial intelligence, nor is the new deal the first collaboration between the drugmaker and Insilico. Eli Lilly has had a licensing agreement to use Insilico's technology since 2023.

However, the new deal, which could be valued as high as $2.75 billion if certain benchmarks are met, represents a massive bet on the future of AI-designed medicines. 

According to Alex Zhavoronkov, Insilico's founder and CEO, using AI to develop new pharmaceuticals not only cuts down on research time. It can also help to speed up the clinical trial process, allowing companies to bring drugs to market more quickly while also lowering research-and-development costs.

Though Insilico is based in Hong Kong and conducts its early drug trials in China, the company develops its AI technology in Canada and the Middle East, according to CNBC.

While many experts have touted AI's potential to develop life-saving new drugs, critics of the technology have pointed to its potential drawbacks. 

For example, the massive, energy-hungry data centers that power AI models have placed an ever-growing strain on aging electrical grids, causing electricity prices to skyrocket for everyday ratepayers. 

Additionally, many skeptics have expressed concerns that AI will increasingly replace human workers, leading to widespread unemployment that could reshape the economy as we know it.

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Even Elon Musk, an AI proponent and CEO of xAI, has predicted that artificial intelligence will "replace all jobs." 

Taking advantage of AI's potential benefits while minimizing its downsides will require large-scale collaboration among governments, industries, and individual citizens. However, whether or not such collaboration will take place remains to be seen.

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