Deep within an alphabet, Google’s parent company, a secret lab works on a promise that bold that it sounds like science fiction: “To solve all diseases.” The company, isomorphic laboratories, is now preparing to start its first human clinical trials for cancer drugs drawn entirely by artificial intelligence.
In a recent interview with Fortune, Colin Murdoch, president of isomorphic laboratories and chief business officer of Google Deepmind, confirmed that the company is at the end of this monumental step. For anyone who has watched a beloved battle of devastating disease, the hope this offers is huge. But for the public ever more careful about AI’s power, it raises a cold question: can we really trust an algorithm “black box” with our lives?
Izomorphic laboratories were born from the famous Alphafold breach of Deepmind, the AI system that stunned scientists predicting the complex 3D forms of protein. To understand why this is a big thing, you need to know how traditionally drugs are made. For decades, it has been a slow, brutal process of test and error. Scientists spend on an average of 10 to 15 years and over a billion dollars to bring a single new drug to market, with most candidates failing along the way.
Izomorphic Labs use their AI, Alphafold 3, to radically accelerate this. The AI can predict the complex 3D structures of proteins in the human body with impressive accuracy, allowing scientists to digitally draw new drug molecules that are perfectly formed to fight a specific disease, before ever entering a physical laboratory
The company has already signed multi-million dollars dealing with pharmaceutical giants Novartis and Eli Lilly, and recently earned $ 600 million in new funding to move its own drug candidates-starting with oncology-in human tests. The promise is a medical utopia. “This funding will further turns the development of our next generational AI-DROG project engine, help us promote our own programs into clinical development, and is an important step forward to our one-day mission to resolve each disease with the help of AI,” CEO Sir Demi Hassabis, who won the 2024 counterattack in his pioneer.
But when does Big Tech start drawing medicine that owns your cure? This is where deep fears about AI’s role in our lives focus. The biggest care is the “black box” problem: we know that the AI gives an answer, but we don’t always know how. This raises critical questions:
- Will an alphabet own the next cancerous drug, as it owns your search results?
- Will these AI project treatments be accessible, or will they be trapped behind heaven-high patents accessible only to the rich?
- Will human test standards continue with the pure speed of machine-generated advances?
- And who is responsible if AI-projecting drug goes wrong? The company that owns the AI? The developers? The ai himself?
When contacted by Gizmodo, an isomorphic laboratories spokesman said the company “has nothing more to share.”
AI could revolutionize medicine. But if left uncontrolled, it could also replicate the worst parts of the TE industry industry: opacity, monopoly and profit over access. Isomorphic laboratories drive humanity to a monumental turning point. If they succeed, they could relieve more suffering than any other invention in history.
But to do so, they must first convince a skeptical public that the promise is worth the unprecedented risk.
