The FDA Will Use AI to Accelerate Approving Drugs

The Food and Drug Administration just announced that it will immediately start using AI across all of its centers, after completing a new generative AI pilot for scientific reviewers. Supposedly, the AI tool will speed up the FDA's drug review process by reducing the time its scientists have to spend doing tedious, repetitive tasks — though, given AI's track record of constantly hallucinating, these claims warrant plenty of scrutiny. "This is a game-changer technology that has enabled me to perform scientific review tasks in minutes that used to take three days," said Jinzhong Liu, a deputy director in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), in a statement. FDA commissioner Martin Makary has directed that all FDA centers should achieve full AI integration by June 30, a questionably aggressive timeline. "By that date, all centers will be operating on a common, secure generative AI system integrated with FDA's internal data platforms," the agency said in its announc ... Read full article.