At Davos, Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson explained that AI is now a key tool for making critical decisions in pharmaceuticals. Hudson explained that AI can make difficult decisions without human bias, unlike career-focused employees who may be influenced by personal interests.
Sanofi opens its drug development meetings by presenting AI’s preliminary recommendations about which drugs to progress. Hudson pointed out that AI doesn’t worry about keeping its job. “It hasn’t been wedded to the project for the last 10 years.” This neutral approach is changing everything, helping us avoid a major flaw in traditional decision-making: when we become too emotionally invested in our work to make clear judgments.
Hudson said that making new drugs takes a very long time and is very expensive, with the first discovery phase lasting 12 to 15 years and costing about €3 billion ($3.1 billion). AI has been working at Sanofi for three years, and it now helps guide one-third of their drug discovery work. AI excels at this stage by using data to spot promising drug compounds that might become future medicines.

Sanofi, which makes Lantus insulin and Plavix blood thinners, shows how AI helps find better drug options faster and with greater precision. In addition to making things go quicker, AI points out potential problems and helps us find important details we need to make good decisions.
Hudson, alongside AWS CEO Matt Garman and Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, talked about the fear that AI could replace human workers. He warned that the bigger danger comes from not using AI, since combining human expertise with AI gives better results than using AI by itself.
As AI moves deeper into drug development, we can already tell that it will greatly change how medicines are made. When Sanofi combines their experts’ experience with AI’s data analysis, they develop new and better healthcare methods.