A technology company, using artificial intelligence, has discovered a drug they believe could cure coronavirus.
The spread of coronavirus around the world caught the scientific community by surprise. This has led to a spike in cases around the world in the last 4 months with Europe and the US becoming the epicenters of the virus.
The race to find the virus treatment has involved the promotion of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine which clinical trials have not punned out to be as anticipated. The artificial intelligence technology has been the go-to solution for many scientists.
Its potential to calculate how fast the virus will spread, creating models for social distancing effects, and predicting when the spread of the virus will come to an end fascinated the scientists from the onset of the virus. However, many of these promises have ended up being unsatisfactory and with no evidence that they actually work as promised.
With each passing day, experts started losing faith in the technology with Neil Lawrence, the former director of machine learning at Amazon Cambridge describing the contrast between what the artificial intelligence technology promised and the results it has delivered as rubbish. He added that in the future, maybe the technology will be able to deliver quality results, but in this pandemic, artificial intelligence had failed and it was overhyped from the start of the pandemic.
Artificial intelligence fighting the pandemic
However, there is one application the artificial intelligence technology has been successful on, during this pandemic, Finding the cure for coronavirus.
An artificial intelligence startup in London, BenevolentAI, turned their attention to coronavirus in January when the virus started making headlines. The one-billion-dollar company analyzed previous drugs with coronavirus in mind to determine which drug could treat the symptoms of coronavirus leading to a full recovery.
Four months later, their efforts finally paid off as they narrowed on barcitinib, a drug developed by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and taken as a pill to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
The discovery of the drug by the company caught Eli Lilly by surprise, as they had not anticipated their drug would be considered as a coronavirus treatment. However, as BenevolentAI provided more research data on their discovery, scientists began to realize the potential of barcitinib and realized it could actually be used to treat coronavirus.
Clinical trials for the drug will start soon to determine its viability in the treatment of coronavirus. Although artificial intelligence has failed to meet the enthusiasm and optimism people had, the discovery of a drug for coronavirus by an artificial intelligence system will prove the technology, with proper know-how can be used in all situations including pandemics and medical research.
Featured image by Pixabay
