it's going to usher in a new era of drug development, design for human health. So all in all, I'd say it's a pretty astounding day... the capabilities and the impact are going to be like, I don't know, I know I say this sort of stuff a lot, but it's going to be pretty profound.
The prediction is framed on a multi-decade horizon ("a new era" with "pretty profound" impacts on drug development and human health), but we are only about 1.5 years past the May 2024 release of AlphaFold 3, far too early to evaluate long‑run, large‑scale health and industry impacts.
Evidence so far is directionally supportive but preliminary:
- AlphaFold‑based methods are being actively refined for drug design; for example, the AF2RAVE approach explicitly combines AlphaFold with physics-based simulations to improve drug-relevant protein conformations, with researchers describing this as enabling faster drug discovery and potentially personalized medicine, but they themselves characterize this as an early-stage step toward that vision. (cmns.umd.edu)
- AI-driven drug discovery companies (including those building on AlphaFold-style models) have AI‑designed drug candidates entering or approaching human clinical trials, which is a major milestone but still only the beginning of the clinical pipeline. (aitechsuite.com)
- Market analyses project rapid growth of AI in drug discovery through 2030 and describe it as transformational for timelines and costs, indicating strong industry uptake but not yet demonstrating realized, population-scale health outcomes. (stocks.observer-reporter.com)
However, demonstrating “profound, large-scale impacts on human health and the biopharma industry” requires:
- Successful completion of Phase II/III trials for multiple AI-designed drugs
- Regulatory approvals and widespread clinical adoption
- Clear, measurable improvements in morbidity, mortality, or cost at scale across many indications
Those outcomes typically take 10–15 years or more from early discovery to broad clinical impact, and as of late 2025 the field is still in the early validation phase. Current data show promise but cannot yet confirm whether the long-run, transformative impact Friedberg predicted will actually materialize.
Because the forecast explicitly concerns the next couple of decades and we are only a short way into that period, with crucial clinical and economic results still pending, the prediction cannot be judged as right or wrong at this time.