Pascal Soriot wants you to know that AstraZeneca's AI is making smarter decisions throughout the research process. The CEO of a company that spent months insisting its COVID vaccine didn't cause blood clots before admitting it caused blood clots now trusts artificial intelligence more than his own judgment. Hard to blame him.
The pharmaceutical industry has discovered that feeding data into algorithms produces better outcomes than letting humans make choices based on gut feelings and quarterly earnings targets. Revolutionary stuff. Next they'll tell us washing hands between surgeries improves patient outcomes.
AI is apparently helping AstraZeneca develop medicines faster. Faster than what exactly? Faster than the traditional method of throwing compounds at diseases for decades while charging patients mortgages for insulin? The bar was underground. A drunk intern with a chemistry set could clear it.
Soriot says the technology is boosting the odds of success in drug development. The current success rate for drugs making it from initial research to market sits around nine percent. If AI bumps that to eleven percent, AstraZeneca will issue a press release calling it a paradigm shift while your portfolio bleeds out because they're spending billions on servers instead of dividends.
The real comedy lives in pharma executives praising AI for making "smarter decisions" when these are the same people who priced EpiPens at $600 and acted confused when Congress asked why. The AI didn't make them smarter. It just replaced them entirely. The algorithm doesn't need stock options or a corner office or a golden parachute when the board asks uncomfortable questions about clinical trial data.
Retail traders will read this headline and immediately search for AI-pharma ETFs to dump their savings into, convinced they've spotted the next big thing six years after everyone else. They'll buy at the top, sell at the bottom, then blame market manipulation when their shares tank because AstraZeneca's AI recommended developing a drug that seventeen other companies are already testing.
Pascal Soriot trusts AI to reshape drug development. I trust it to reshape his job description to "former CEO" faster than any medicine it creates.
Photo by Etactics Inc on Unsplash
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