Kim Branson is the SVP and Global Head of AI and Machine Learning at GSK. He reflects on model complexity versus performance gains in machine learning.
Insight
Branson warns biological models showing 0.9 accuracy usually contain underlying errors
“In biology, as you know, like, the best model you can build has, like, a figure of merit of accuracy, like.6, if it's .9, anything that looks great, there's something wrong.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Branson predicts every drug launched by GSK will have accompanying software
“So every, every software, every drug VSK will launch will have software that sits around it. I think that's gonna be true of everybody, and there's, we're going to see, there's software that will sit around every drug, and we'll say, you know, who should use i…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GSK's active learning target discovery is 20% faster than random screening
“That's about 20% faster we've shown than doing a random screen.”
Insight
Branson calls human outcome data big pharma's biggest competitive AI advantage
“Outcome data is, is, is the gold standard data to have, right? It's the rarest data that's really, like, one of the advantages of pharmaceutical companies have, because they can generate data in humans at scale in a safe, ethical manner.”
Assertion Supported
GSK made AI core to its strategy via in-house functional genomics
“They're fully investing in the things I thought were very important at the time, which was, you know, these large genetic databases coming online and functional genomics. So he was way ahead in the, in sort of the thinking about CRISPR and like the gene pertur…”
Insight
Branson applies Amdahl's law to companies balancing productive work and communication
“Armdahl's Law isn't just for CPUs, it's for companies, so that ratio of, like, computation to communication, right, is really important.”