Benevolent AI is a British artificial intelligence company that is quite literally reinventing the scientific method for the 21st century. Founded in 2013, their ambitious mission is to harness the power of AI and machine learning to drive rapid scientific discovery and accelerate the development of new medicines.
Located in London’s tech hub of King’s Cross alongside innovative giants like Google and Facebook, BenevolentAI operates with an audacious vision – to turn the world’s vast and fragmented scientific research data into usable knowledge that benefits society.
Overcoming Information Overload with AI
The need for Benevolent AI’s technology is immense. Despite huge advances, the core tools of scientific research have remained stagnant for decades. This is increasingly problematic in today’s landscape where medical information is growing exponentially.
The numbers are mind-boggling – a new scientific paper is published every 30 seconds, and there are thousands of daily updates to databases like PubMed. It’s humanly impossible for researchers to process all this available information. Consequently, only a tiny fraction gets translated into real, actionable insights.
AI offers a powerful solution. By ingesting and analyzing vast troves of data, AI systems like those developed by BenevolentAI can identify important information, generate hypotheses, and continue refining their capabilities over time.
Accelerating Drug Discovery with Human-Machine Collaboration
At its core, BenevolentAI is applying AI and deep learning to accelerate the painfully slow process of drug discovery and development. Their technology enables the analysis of massive quantities of complex scientific data, helping researchers draw insights that would be impossible through traditional methods alone.
The company operates two divisions – Benevolent Bio focuses on human health and biosciences applications, while Benevolent Tech develops the underlying AI platforms for use across multiple industries.
But in both cases, the vision is to combine human and machine intelligence for exponential advances. As Professor Jackie Hunter, Benevolent Bio’s CEO, explains: “We’re harnessing AI to accelerate drug discovery, helping our – and other – scientists make sense of and draw new insights from the world’s mass of scientific data.”
Recent Milestone: Exclusive Drug Candidate Deal
Benevolent AI’s groundbreaking approach is already bearing fruit. In November 2022, the company announced an exclusive license agreement with pharmaceutical giant Janssen (part of Johnson & Johnson). This gave Benevolent AI sole rights over a series of Janssen’s novel clinical-stage drug candidates and associated patents.
According to Hunter, “This was a milestone for our company, unleashing a wealth of data that we can now evaluate using our AI technology…We can now determine the potential of these small molecule compounds to be useful medicines.”
With clinical trials for these drug candidates expected to begin in mid-2017, Benevolent AI is accelerating its drug development pipeline and targeting areas like inflammation, neurodegeneration, rare cancers, and orphan diseases.
While still in relatively early stages, Benevolent AI represents a fascinating revolution in how scientific knowledge is created and new medicines are discovered. By combining human intelligence with artificial intelligence, the possibilities for advancing science and improving lives are staggering.