Covid-19: Businesses and the Private Sector

Baroness Shields Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shields (Con)]

My Lords, today I would like to talk about how artificial intelligence has made its mark as a powerful technology in the fight against Covid-19. Before I begin, I declare my interest as CEO of the British technology and drug discovery company, BenevolentAI.

Following China’s publication on 12 January of the genetic sequence of the virus, the race was on to identify existing drugs that can be used to treat Covid-19 infections until a vaccine becomes available. The focus has been on already-approved drugs that could have the prophylactic effect of reducing the severity of the infection, or that could inhibit the virus and the body’s hyper-inflammatory response to it. In an epidemic, speed is of the essence. Artificial intelligence and machine-learning models excel at handling data in fast-changing circumstances. Computing power and algorithms work as tireless and unbiased super-researchers, analysing chemical, biological and medical data to identify potential drug leads much faster than humans can do alone.

In late January, BenevolentAI launched a scientific inquiry using artificial intelligence to identify approved drugs that could potentially inhibit the viral progression of Covid-19 and which could be given to patients immediately. The group’s biomedical knowledge graph surfaced a number of potential drugs and identified Baricitinib as an approved drug for rheumatoid arthritis that could be a potential treatment. At the start of February, these research findings were published in the Lancet and following that in the Lancet’s list of infectious diseases. By mid-March, small groups of Italian physicians who were battling the virus on the front line became aware of the hypothesis and began testing Baricitinib on patients. These investigator-led trials yielded successful outcomes. Eli Lilly, which owns the drug Baricitinib, subsequently validated BenevolentAI’s research hypotheses in vitro and by 10 April had entered into an agreement with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to test the drug in clinical trials. The incredible speed with which these hypotheses have moved from computer to lab-bench to the bedsides of patients demonstrates the far-reaching potential of AI models and algorithms to identify existing drugs and new drugs to treat disease.

In a connected world in which pathogens spread at unprecedented speed, advanced technologies like AI and machine learning can be the weapons to fight back. While AI has proved its worth in the battle against Covid-19, ultimately it is the fusion of machine intelligence and the triumph of human ingenuity that will bring our society through this crisis.