The promises are grandiose: Anthropic’s chief executive said artificial intelligence could cure most human diseases within a decade. Another tech exec joked that AI researchers have started smoking cigarettes because they are so confident AI will cure lung cancer. Pharma executives don’t buy it. “That’s complete BS,” said Jeff Leiden, executive chairman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, recalling a recent conversation with a tech leader who claimed AI would cure 90% of human disease in the next seven years. Vertex has used roughly 50 AI companies to comb through its data set of 10,000 drug compounds, Leiden said. Not one managed to…

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