Hot topic: AI becomes “must have” technology for life sciences firms as prices fall

AI chatbots like ChatGPT were considered to be disruptive technologies when they were unveiled shortly after the upheaval of the pandemic. 

But what happens when the disruptor is disrupted? The announcement of the cut-price competitor DeepSeek from China’s Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co. Ltd shows how even AI giants like Nvidia and OpenAI are themselves vulnerable to innovative rivals. 

In this case, DeepSeek was able to overcome the U.S. ban on sale of powerful chips to China. This was reportedly by stockpiling tens of thousands of chips before the ban and finding workarounds with cheaper available chips.  

The development demonstrates not only the vulnerability of seemingly unassailable tech giants, but also that technology has quickly become interwoven at all levels of society. 

Chatbots are likely to be as useful to biotech companies as they are in every workplace, but the DeepSeek phenomenon demonstrates that generative AI is becoming a necessity just to keep pace with rivals. 

Already used in drug research as a tool to reduce the uncertainty surrounding a drug’s safety and efficacy, advanced computing techniques could be used to help developers second-guess any number of problems during the development process. 

Outside of the technical problem-solving surrounding drug design, generative AI could help developers anticipate questions from regulators, as well as support generating the myriad of documents and supporting materials needed to get a drug through the development process. 

Just like every new technology, AI is likely to get cheaper, increasing pharma’s reliance on it in the coming years.