DeepMind CEO Sees AI Cutting Drug Discovery From Years to Months

Discovering new medicines takes years and is marred by an astronomical failure rate. The Nobel Prize-winning head of Alphabet Inc.’s artificial intelligence lab says the technology will soon trim that time to under a year.

“In the next couple of years, I’d like to see that cut down in a matter of months, instead of years,” Demis Hassabis said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “That’s what I think is possible. Perhaps even faster.”

Hassabis runs Google DeepMind, the company’s AI unit, as well as Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet division focused on drug discovery. Since forming ...