Automating Innovation: When Technology Starts Inventing More Technology

It now costs more than $800 million to develop a major new drug. But what if pharmaceutical companies could use technology to predict which experimental drugs will get FDA approval, and which ones will fail? What if semiconductor companies could use similar methods to design chips? And, what if other companies could use computers rather than humans to design vehicles and write computer software? Well, that’s exactly what’s happening. While these methods won’t replace top research scientists or engineers any time soon, they are likely to take the place of a lot of the t.....