Biotech Firms Replace Medical Researchers with AI as Scientists Warn of Lost Serendipity

Biotech corporations including Genentech are cutting hundreds of positions and shifting toward machine-learning systems in medical research, according to a report published by Freitag. Two senior researchers have raised warnings about the consequences: Henning Walczak, a professor at the Cancer Institute of University College London, and his colleague Ivan Dikic of Goethe-Universität Frankfurt argue that removing human researchers from the process sacrifices curiosity and chance discoveries. The article questions whether medical progress genuinely requires human involvement at all, noting that if AI holds any real promise, medical research would seem its most natural application. The piece contrasts public anxiety about AI replacing authors and musicians with the quieter acceptance of AI in drug discovery. Several systems are already deployed in this field: AlphaFold, developed by Google DeepMind to predict protein structures in the body, is now used to develop new medications; Evo 2 predicts genetic mutations; and TranscriptFormer simulates cells and how they change. Walczak and Dikic's intervention comes as biotech companies continue to shed research staff. The report leaves open whether the gains from automated discovery outweigh the loss of human intuition and accidental findings that have historically driven medical breakthroughs.