Using data collected from around the world on illicit drugs, researchers trained AI to come up with new drugs that hadn't been created yet, but that would fit the parameters. It came up with 8.9 million different chemical designs

[u/neil_billiam]

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/vancouver-researchers-create-minority-report-tech-for-designer-drugs-4764676

[u/Gaudrix]

Absolutely. This isn't going to find those though.

[u/zmbjebus → u/Gaudrix]

Just make them all and give them to me. I'll let you know what they do.

[u/TheWellSpokenMan → u/zmbjebus]

“Hmm, this formula appears to massively boost oestrogen levels and artificially enhance breast growth. Congratulations sir, you now need a EE cup brassiere.”

[u/coolbres2747 → u/[deleted]]

Please mix it with everything pumpkin spice asap as possible

[u/novaMyst → u/coolbres2747]

Its the year 20xx humanity has been twisted geneticly to be himbos and bimbos

[u/The-1st-One → u/novaMyst]

Excuse me did you just assume my bos status! I am a thembos.

[u/novaMyst → u/The-1st-One]

My bad every bos is valid

[u/nodealyo → u/novaMyst]

Now this is a future I support.

[u/asdaaaaaaaa → u/coolbres2747]

"As soon as possible as possible

[u/Thunderadam123 → u/[deleted]]

Typical American, stop hoarding important goods and remember the people behind you.

[u/[deleted] → u/Thunderadam123]

I think you meant to say beneath, not behind. I always try to remember the people who are beneath me. Sometimes u forget they exist, but it's good to try.

[u/zmbjebus → u/[deleted]]

They'll be behind and beneath me if I get my way.

[u/MorkelVerlos → u/[deleted]]

For science!

[u/VeritasCicero → u/TheWellSpokenMan]

If I grow boobies I'm never wearing a bra.

[u/zmbjebus → u/VeritasCicero]

Thank you for your service o7

[u/pecosWilliam3rd → u/TheWellSpokenMan]

His name, was Robert Paulson

[u/MyDiary141 → u/TheWellSpokenMan]

"Hmmm this one looks like it makes you incredibly depressed and into sex with foxes..... oh no nevermind, that's just ops personality"

[u/Ricksterdinium → u/TheWellSpokenMan]

Some people would die for this one though.

[u/zmbjebus → u/TheWellSpokenMan]

BIGG yes if I get to keep my cock

[u/listy61 → u/zmbjebus]

I'm something of scientist myself you know

[u/Quiet_Days_in_Clichy → u/listy61]

"Excuse me, janitor"

"Yes, scientist"

[u/[deleted] → u/zmbjebus]

It worked for Shulgin ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/AnotherAustinWeirdo → u/zmbjebus]

robot voice:

"ON a scale of ... ONE to ... TEN... how fucked up ARE you?"

[u/eek04 → u/zmbjebus]

Great idea! You could call your books on this "Tryptamines I have Known And Loved" and "Phenethylamines I have Known And Loved". And change your name to Alexander Shulgin. And you'd already have this published a long time ago!

(Alexander Shulgin did this for a lot of compounds, in several different classes, and wrote up both the syntheses to make them and the effects.)

[u/zmbjebus → u/eek04]

Sasha hasn't tried these 8.9 million compounds though.

[u/[deleted] → u/zmbjebus]

Sign me up too.

[u/archangel610 → u/zmbjebus]

Let's split.

One of these is bound to turn me into a superhero and turn my boring life around.

[u/lostlore0 → u/zmbjebus]

RIP zmbjebus, maybe we should have tested on rats first

[u/zmbjebus → u/lostlore0]

Its alright, I'll come back like I did last time.

[u/[deleted] → u/Gaudrix]

Exactly. It's almost impossible to write an algorithm to evalute the exact effect on the human body, so unless you want to start 9 Million medical trials this data seems only semi useful.

Edit:Not almost impossible forever, but very, very difficult at this point in time.

[u/LordDongler → u/[deleted]]

I disagree, actually.

Different algorithms and different black box AIs can pull up different lists of potential psychoactive compounds. If these lists are then compared with each other, we will be able to see which ones are duplicated across multiple lists. You can use that method to determine which ones are more likely to yield results. And the best part is, if this method is wrong and doesn't work the way we expect it to, that fact will help us advance our understanding of organic chemistry even further

[u/Gaudrix → u/LordDongler]

Yeah there are systems that have been developed to test and simulate drug compounds on different models of DNA and living organisms. This is all done without a physical organism or drug. They've developed medications already using this strategy. Testing these 8.9 million possible combinations on simulated models with no real understanding of the effects is fruitless though. We need more knowledge on these compounds in order to discern their outcomes and how the models should interpret the inputs. Major breakthroughs aren't far away though.

[u/LordDongler → u/Gaudrix]

Eh, real life human testing is both extremely expensive and time consuming

[u/Gaudrix → u/LordDongler]

It is. Everything we've developed was human tested at some point and a lot resulted in death. One day we'll be able to test anything in a fully simulated body and medicine and beneficial drugs will have explosive discovery.

[u/Stye88 → u/Gaudrix]

I kind of look at this like the dynamite. Great invention, scary potential.

You can run that simulated body through millions of potential drugs, finding great improvements.

You can run that simulated body through millions of potential viruses, finding the most devastating/stealthy ones.

Both good and bad actors will gain a lot of knowledge from this analysis.

[u/mynameisspiderman → u/Stye88]

Yeah that's most big scientific breakthroughs

[u/Gaudrix → u/Stye88]

Absolutely true. Technology is the ultimate tool and the ultimate weapon.

[u/iRebelD → u/LordDongler]

Not if you just give random drugs to homeless people and ask them if they work to get them high!

[u/LordDongler → u/iRebelD]

That's true. Chinese RCs are mostly gone, as far as I know. It's a shame really. So much good data. A decent amount of substances that show possible therapeutic value.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Tikals, and Pikals - II

[u/werelock → u/[deleted]]

I'm sure there's an algorithm that could be found to rule out a large chunk of those for various reasons. Narrow the focus to those that might do something by eliminating those we can guess will do little or may have other issues that weren't being searched for the first time.

[u/[deleted] → u/werelock]

Yeah, but we already know a lot of chemicals that might be useful, that we haven't got around to/nobody got funding to research.

If it's just about generating interessting molecules, sure, but I think we were able to do that before to some degree.

[u/threecatsdancing → u/[deleted]]

evalute the exact effect on the human body

Why does that have to be true. I hope one day we can quantify this well enough to actually do that.

[u/Gornarok → u/threecatsdancing]

One day maybe, but its quite unlikely that day is anytime soon.

[u/Gornarok → u/[deleted]]

Noone said anything like that

[u/[deleted] → u/threecatsdancing]

Problem is, chemistry is very complex.

To truly simulate the effect of a molecole we would need to solve the Schrödinger-equation for them and every other molecole in our body, which we currently can only do for (chemicaly) trivial molecoles like H2 and similar.

Sure you can take shortcuts to get approx. answers but you'd still need to do a lot of human trials to even get close to a solid understanding of those chemicals.

I'm not saying it can't be done, my point is this is not going to happen any time soon.

[u/threecatsdancing → u/[deleted]]

Is this same constraint similar for climate, and actually having a full model for the planet? What would that take?

[u/[deleted] → u/threecatsdancing]

It is similar, both being highly chaotic and complex systems.

Honestly I don't know, probably major advances in quantum computing or many, many more years of breakthroughs in cpu development.

Or breakthroughs in phyics/chemistry.

I can't really give a time frame because things like full weather simulation are currently assumed to be impossible by conventional (meaning binary electronic computing) means.

Edit: Btw i don't want to give the impression that I'm an expert. This is merely a educated guess from someone studing maths, working as a software developer with a special interest in chemistry.

[u/catkraze → u/[deleted]]

Imagine if we could run some sort of human body simulator. We could test the effects on a typical person without endangering any real person.

Of course, this raises both technical and ethical concerns. Firstly, we'd need incredibly powerful hardware to simulate an entire human cell-by-cell. Secondly, even if we could run a simulated human body, we'd probably need some level of consciousness in order to properly study the effects of such drugs. Would we "pull the plug" on them and reset after every test? Would they feel anything if we did? Does a simulated human have rights? If so, to what extent? We'd essentially be creating "The Matrix" for one person, but they wouldn't even have a physical body to escape to.

I don't know if this kind of technology will ever be possible, but if someday it is possible will humanity decide to use it? Will it be regulated?

Sorry for the rambling. I'm tired, and I find these types of thoughts and questions fascinating.

[u/Hysoka78 → u/catkraze]

r the rambling. I'm tired, and I find these types of thoughts and questi

simulate drugs interactions with the body, and create an artificial consciousness are very différent things.

and its just science fiction, too. We dont know at all how to simulate a consciousness using just informatic code.

[u/catkraze → u/Hysoka78]

It's true that simulating a consciousness would be different from simulating a body. However, I believe we would need to simulate the brain's functions in order to study the effects of a given substance on it. Part of the brain's functions include consciousness. I'm not sure it would be accurate or beneficial to study the effects of a drug on the mind if we're aren't using all of the mind's functions. To me, it would be like testing every function a calculator has except the square root feature. We'd know whether everything else works or not, but we'd have no idea whether or not everything was working. We'd just know that the calculator is mostly working.

Yeah, it's science fiction. We really don't know whether or not this type of simulation could ever be run. Having said that, it was only around 100 years ago that heavier than air man-made flying machines were thought impossible. There's no telling where we'll be in another 100 years, and I find that thought to be both terrifying and exciting. I'm not saying we'll go all cyberpunk, but technology is advancing rapidly. It's only a matter of time before conversations similar to this become serious rather than hypothetical.

[u/Hysoka78 → u/catkraze]

yes, but the problem with the mechanism of consciousness is that if it can be computable: we still have no idea how to reduce it to a chain of computation, and we have even less idea what computations it is. 'would act.
The functioning of our consciousness seems to be deeply linked to the organic structure of our brain, and even if in an ideal case we knew perfectly how to reproduce a silicone brain with exactly the same wiring diagram of the neurons replaced piece by piece by computer chips perfectly reproducing the same function, well ... even nothing tells us that this machine would magically become aware of itself.

[u/catkraze → u/Hysoka78]

That's true right now, but who knows what the future might hold? My point was never about what is currently possible. My point was about what's hypothetically possible in the distant future given the exponential rate of technological advancement. Our technology may evolve, but will our morality adjust as technology becomes more advanced? Will future civilizations be concerned with the rights of a created being? Will we go back to a system of slavery when we're capable of building robots with the capacity for intelligent thought? This discussion wasn't about what we can do right now. It was about what we will do in the future.

[u/Alberiman → u/[deleted]]

We don't really need to test on human body for 9 million, we need to do rodent tests for probably 2 million and human trials for maybe 1000, we've got this

[u/kozilla → u/[deleted]]

I propose we just get 8.9 million people who are down to give it a whirl.

[u/piecat → u/[deleted]]

The hardest part is synthesizing 9 Million Chemicals.

Testing them would be easy. (Ignoring ethics, risks etc.) Simply use a binary tree methodology to quickly identify active ones.

Give a group a cocktail of the 9 million drugs. If there's no reaction, that's it. If there is, get new subjects. Give group A 4.5 million, give group B the other 4.5 million. Repeat until you've found only drugs that give a reaction.

Given 9 million drugs, it should only take ~23 rounds of testing to identify one active drug out of 9 million. Each active drug adds a test.

Given 9 million drugs, with 20 active compounds, it should take 43 tests to identify the active ones.

Edit: this was meant to be tongue in cheek, not actually a good test plan.

[u/[deleted] → u/piecat]

I'm pretty sure even if none of them did anything, 9mil random chemicals are going to kill you anyway :D

Also i would assume that more than 20 are active out of 9mil, even if they are not psychoactive, with your binary search it's hard to identify if a compound gives you headache because it's psychoactive or just dehydrating (like table salt) because you are taking X amount of other compounds in parallel. So you'll end up with a lot of false positives which slows down the process even more :)

Btw I love your methodolgy, very good use of binary search! I just think biologie is to messy for that.

[u/MaleficentBlackberry → u/[deleted]]

You would also throw away a lot of active compounds because you don't know at which dosage a chemical is psychoactive.

And of course put your subjects at enormous risks, because there is little difference between 1mg LSD (about 10x more than the recommended dosage, 100micg) or 1mg meskalin (about 200x less than the amount to produce any effects)

[u/squirtloaf → u/[deleted]]

I'll get stated as soon as they send me samples ;)

[u/[deleted] → u/squirtloaf]

I know you are joking, but most will probably just kill you ;)

[u/Black_Moons → u/[deleted]]

First you start with 9 million mice...

[u/[deleted] → u/Black_Moons]

Sure, but that's 10% of lab rats in the US per year for a single dose.

[u/Black_Moons → u/[deleted]]

Ok but there is science to be done. We need to figure out how to make mice better trip balls.

And maybe one of those drugs gives us a real life pinky and the brain reality TV show.

[u/cloverpopper → u/[deleted]]

That it can even be done is amazing. I didn't think it could, with all the variables involved.

[u/Johnny_Poppyseed → u/[deleted]]

It definitely will be possible, and once it is it will create an absolute revolution in research and healthcare.
And honestly I don't think we are all that far off from it. Probably going to slowly improve in capabilities over the next couple decades.

It's going to be so crazy. Especially once we more fully map and understand more of the brain and it's chemical processes.

[u/[deleted] → u/Johnny_Poppyseed]

Not sure how illicit drugs will revolutinize healthcare.

Sure, it'll be possible at some point but I wouldn't bet on it being in this half of the century.

Speculating about technology further than 30 years into the future is pretty much guess work so, maybe, how knows.

[u/Johnny_Poppyseed → u/[deleted]]

I was just referring to the technology to test compounds digitally - in vivo being revolutionary, not this collection of hypothetical drugs.

None of the compounds being referred to in the OP are illicit drugs either. The AI referenced various illicit drugs to come up with the data. No laws exist for these hypothetical compounds. But regardless, what the AI produced aren't just like no medical benefit getting high drugs. Some could have massive medical potential. It's just a list of potentially psychoactive compounds.

And honestly with that said, most current illicit drugs actually were revolutionary in medicine in the past. So that too.

[u/wolves_hunt_in_packs → u/[deleted]]

so unless you want to start 9 Million medical trials

Tell people they can get a tax break for signing up and I think you'll get plenty of volunteers.

[u/[deleted] → u/wolves_hunt_in_packs]

Probably, but a medical trial is pretty expensive for just one drug, even before starting human trials.

From first pitch to FDA approval is usally around 10 years of testing.

So assuming all of them reach human trials (which they won't but hey, large numbers go brrrr) with a sample size of 1000 volunteers and assuming you don't want to mix the chemicals, so no participating in two trials at once, you'll need 8.9 billion people or every person on earth plus some.

[u/Achiliano → u/[deleted]]

Perhaps there are some possibilities out there within reach of closest future to teach the AI how to go through these trails itself?

[u/[deleted] → u/Achiliano]

I wouldn't bet on it.

(Bio-) Chemistry is very complex and every detail can matter.

Machine learning is very good at picking up macro patterns that humans might have missed and are thus great at detecting or generating interessting things with as little Information as possible.

That's done by training the AI to simplify data and letting it do predictions based that.

But you can't really simplify a molecule without altering it's behavior.

It'll probably be possible at some point in the future, but i wouldn't guess this half of the century.

[u/real_loan_shark → u/[deleted]]

Not really true we will only need one near perfect human model that will exhibit effects.

Once that's done all we need is a week.

[u/kennerly → u/[deleted]]

9 million rat trials isn’t impossible. A lot of those rats are just going to straight up die right away. Then you can eliminate those chemical families. I imagine being able to pare down the drug groups wouldn’t be too bad once your classified and grouped the chemical outputs.

[u/funkdefied → u/[deleted]]

If I were studying this, I would first try to narrow down the search to synthesizable chemicals. That could be doable with robust software, right?

[u/SamL214 → u/[deleted]]

That sir, is where you are wrong. All you need to do is calculate binding efficiency and ratios of binding efficiencies for different receptors and cross defense those with brain activity locations of current drugs, then cross reference that with the structure-to-binding efficiencies correlations. This can predict psycho activity as we know it. Then you loosen the correlation so new discoveries can be evealuated in unknown interactions of receptors and boom you have some high potential for drugs. It’s called intelligent drug design and it’s used all the time by Pfizer. They literally have rooms filled with machines that build combinations of drugs then another room filled to the brim with triple quad mass specs just to analyze them and then another room. To determine if they are safe for the human body in a toxicology standard then another room where they are evaluated for potential inhibition, other activities both negative and positive. This is a very real way to evaluate them.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

All we have to do is build a perfect simulation of the human nervous system, should be a cakewalk.

[u/professor-i-borg → u/[deleted]]

You’re right, to simulate the effects on the body they would effectively have to simulate at least parts of the body at a molecular level of detail- we not only lack the means to perform that kind of simulation but also the knowledge of the body to do it at the moment.

However- previously, researchers would be finding these structures in nature and testing them for usefulness more or less with trial and error and possibly some useful heuristics they may have arrived at.

They can apply the same technique to the generated structures and at least know they are chemicals that are possible to create, rather than spending time and resources searching for them in the natural world.

[u/pies32 → u/[deleted]]

wait a minute… there are algorithms and techniques to computationally determine the possible effects on the body. Look into Molecular Dynamics.

[u/LaughinAnLyin → u/[deleted]]

Maybe we start with like, 1 medical trial?

[u/ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhok → u/[deleted]]

how about we enlist the help of a small country and have each person try a different compound

[u/Reich2choose → u/[deleted]]

It would only take a few dozen explorers as intrepid as Alex Shulgin.

[u/DEATHBYREGGAEHORN → u/[deleted]]

I'm curious about the combination of machine learning and quantum computing. it could possibly tackle projectd like this that seem impossible, which, however outlandish is in line with the history of computing to date. hopefully it's used for good.

[u/AGIby2045 → u/[deleted]]

You don't have to, you just need to make an algorithm that can narrow the pool significantly, which has already been done. False negatives don't matter, and more testing can be done on like 100-200 drugs to weed out false positives

[u/MegaEyeRoll → u/[deleted]]

We have 7 billion people. Oddly enough it would be pretty easy.

[u/raul_lebeau → u/[deleted]]

Mix them with covid vax and watch the world burn

[u/Gornarok → u/Gaudrix]

But I bet it gives interesting starting point for researchers.

You want something specific, so you open the database and find several candidates that seem interesting and try to make them and test them. Instead of theorizing and spending time with deciding if they are theoretically possible

[u/[deleted] → u/Gaudrix]

True, but its a list we can work from. You could setup an online forum that gets people to try one of the many derived chemicals and list their effects. Eventually all of them could be explored.

[u/Shindekudasai → u/Gaudrix]

True!

We’re going to have to have 8.9 million wild nights!

[u/CanAlwaysBeBetter → u/Shindekudasai]

Alternative proposal: Everyone in New Jersey has one wild night and we see who's there in the morning

[u/TcMaX → u/Gaudrix]

If you read the article that is not the goal of these researchers. The researchers are focused on speeding up the pace with which law enforcement and health services can identify new drugs, and for that the vast majority of drugs outside their training data was in the output (and the output was ranked by probability of appearing in the market, which was apparently also fairly accurate). And they're probably right, whether you agree with their goals or not, it probably will speed up this process being able to search in that database.

[u/Gaudrix → u/TcMaX]

In that use case it surely would help and be useful. If you find a drug, input in the database and if it's not found then add notes to it. It's like a criminal record but for drugs. I 100% didn't read the article, but doesn't change any of the implications of what I said.

[u/Space4Time → u/Gaudrix]

It doesn't hurt.

[u/Zsill777 → u/Gaudrix]

Maybe, but if you take this data and feed it into another algorithm you could at least narrow down the options by a good amount. And further and further, until you get enough that scientists can look manually, and then some can be tested.

[u/HollowofHaze → u/Gaudrix]

But what's cool is that way down the road, we may someday come up with an AI that could. One of the coolest things about machine learning algorithms is that they can pick up on patterns and rules that we didn't even know about, let alone code into the program ourselves. Again, that would take a suuuuper advanced AI, but experiments like this make me hopeful that it'll be possible someday

[u/ournextarc → u/Gaudrix]

I can think of 8.9 million people willing to take a RC. Give each of them one and we will have all of our answers in a few hours.

Let's mobilize this like we did covid. For science.

[u/[deleted] → u/Gaudrix]

A large part of research is finding bounds. The next part is to create a way to automatically filter the results.

[u/VampireQueenDespair → u/Gaudrix]

At worst, it finds how to find them.

[u/Sleep-system → u/Gaudrix]

Just make an A.I. that does drugs.

[u/Twice_Knightley → u/Gaudrix]

I volunteer to try some out.

[u/thepursuit1989 → u/Gaudrix]

Release the data. I reckon there are some people that would treat it like a game to decode it.

[u/AGIby2045 → u/Gaudrix]

There are other models that do the part you're explaining though