Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Speaker 1: with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Carol, this story crossing by Rachel Matt's just about one
Speaker 2: pm this afternoon. This is pretty cool. Open ai is
Speaker 2: releasing a free tool. It's aimed at making it easier
Speaker 2: for scientists to use chat GPT to draft research papers
Speaker 2: and collaborate with colleagues. It's part of a larger effort
Speaker 2: to position its chatbot as an aid for scientific work
Speaker 2: and discoveries. Okay, it's called Prism. Open ai is rolling
Speaker 2: it out today. It uses the company's GPT five point
Speaker 2: two AI model to carry out task related to writing
Speaker 2: and revising academic work. A scientist, for example, might ask
Speaker 2: it to help improve the way a paper is written
Speaker 2: and find related papers to cite in their work, or
Speaker 2: generate a computerized version of a handwritten diagram.
Speaker 3: Just be careful not to copy somebody else's work, or
Speaker 3: is gonna say, well, you won't be not good citations
Speaker 3: are important.
Speaker 2: I think the uh administration ran into some issues with
Speaker 2: using AI to come out with some guidelines in recent months,
Speaker 2: and it was found that it's cited papers that don't
Speaker 2: actually exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's super interesting. I think we're finding
Speaker 3: our way. But I do agree, and I think there's
Speaker 3: a momentum of AI in general. What it couldn't do
Speaker 3: maybe for the healthcare space, for the science space. We
Speaker 3: have a great voice on this. We love touching base
Speaker 3: with her. Jenny Rook, founder and managing director of Genera Ventures.
Speaker 3: It's a VC firm. It invests in, it invests in
Speaker 3: having a tough I'm having a tough time on this Tuesday.
Speaker 3: I blame the snow and maybe being a little off.
Speaker 3: She says, the quote next generation of companies at the
Speaker 3: convergence of technology and biology. This is what she invests in. Jenny,
Speaker 3: good to have you back with us. So talk to
Speaker 3: us about new year, maybe some new ideas, maybe some
Speaker 3: new momentum. Uh. The JP Morgan Healthcare Conference wrapped up
Speaker 3: earlier this month. You were there. Tell us what we
Speaker 3: need to know, especially for those who are listening and
Speaker 3: watching in terms of the investing landscape, trends, narratives in
Speaker 3: this space.
Speaker 4: Sure, I'm happy to good to be back with you,
Speaker 4: Caroly and Tim. Yeah, it was a dynamic year for
Speaker 4: the JP morgan Bytech conference that happens every year here
Speaker 4: in San Francisco. It is always good sort of bell
Speaker 4: weather for how people are feeling going into the new year.
Speaker 4: I would say the headline that I kept hearing in
Speaker 4: conversations around here was cautiously optimistic, which you know, I'll
Speaker 4: take it after the last couple of years, although I
Speaker 4: must admit that was a phrase that we said last
Speaker 4: year as well, and then twenty twenty five happened with
Speaker 4: all its uncertainties, but there was a different, probably different feel.
Speaker 4: There were more people here actually this year than last year.
Speaker 4: Generally speaking, events were quite well attended, and I think
Speaker 4: there was a lot of energy around the very real
Speaker 4: impacts as you were just talking about, of AI on
Speaker 4: health and science, and also some of the shifts in
Speaker 4: the availability of funding, both public and private for advancing
Speaker 4: health care and science, actually along the lines of your
Speaker 4: previous guests. So I would say, in general, lots to
Speaker 4: be excited about, again, perhaps cautiously. Yeah.
Speaker 2: We spoke to you know, just a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: ago from the JPM conference. We heard from some of
Speaker 2: the heads or chairs of the biggest pharmaceutical companies out there.
Speaker 2: Are you also seeing like the early stage stuff. Are
Speaker 2: you seeing a lot of opportunities there still? Because as
Speaker 2: we've spoke to you a lot about quite you know
Speaker 2: over the last year, a lot of that stems from
Speaker 2: academic research. There are questions about funding. We just spoke
Speaker 2: about it with Janet Lauren, you know, in these universities,
Speaker 2: and that funding drying up from the federal government. Is
Speaker 2: that excitement still?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 2: Are the opportunities still there? Are you having a hard
Speaker 2: time picking and choosing which investments to make because there
Speaker 2: are a plethora of investments to make.
Speaker 4: I think there are always going to be opportunities because
Speaker 4: there's so much we're still learning about basic science and
Speaker 4: how to use it. And as we've been talking about
Speaker 4: the acceleration of the ability to get some data as
Speaker 4: a scientist, as a researcher, as a technology developer, as
Speaker 4: an entrepreneur, get that data, reincorporate anyone's thinking with the
Speaker 4: tools of AI, and come up with new ways to
Speaker 4: pursue either the business plan or the scientific research that
Speaker 4: Flywheel is spending faster with the assistance of AI and
Speaker 4: other kinds of connectivity and collaboration. So that's definitely happening.
Speaker 4: I think One of the things we've talked about in
Speaker 4: our conversations in the past is while it was very
Speaker 4: much disruptive to people's expectations about where federal dollars were
Speaker 4: going to be coming from for advancing science, we've seen
Speaker 4: a couple of things. One the resilience of those driven,
Speaker 4: passionate researchers who are looking to get their work done
Speaker 4: one day, one way or another figuring out ways to
Speaker 4: get that funding done. As well as entrepreneurs. They tend
Speaker 4: to be the grittiest and the most driven. So we're
Speaker 4: seeing in some cases this actually, perhaps counterintuitively, is creating
Speaker 4: a new category or more opportunities for the early stage investor,
Speaker 4: where perhaps a researcher who hadn't been thinking of commercializing
Speaker 4: their research is starting to think, well, is there an
Speaker 4: opportunity to bring this out in a way where I
Speaker 4: can access both commercial dollars and the funding that is
Speaker 4: available for advancing science.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I also think about, you know, how patient Jenny investors
Speaker 3: have to be for really seeing the AI payoff when
Speaker 3: it comes to you know, either biotech developments. We know
Speaker 3: some of this stuff takes time in a normal world,
Speaker 3: and we know AI I can certainly speed up things.
Speaker 3: But I'm just curious, does the time frame for figuring
Speaker 3: out developments in this area is it sped up because
Speaker 3: of AI or is it still going to take a while.
Speaker 4: This is such an important point, Carol. We have to
Speaker 4: keep in mind that many of the accelerations that we're
Speaker 4: talking about that AI can bring to the practice of
Speaker 4: science is still happening at the beginning of a journey too.
Speaker 4: For example, bring a new intervention or diagnostic product to market,
Speaker 4: and so perhaps it can help us come up with
Speaker 4: novel medicines or novel targets for medicines, but we're still
Speaker 4: looking at the beginning of the multi year, many hundreds
Speaker 4: of millions of dollars journey to bring a drug properly
Speaker 4: through clinical development. So I think it is important to
Speaker 4: your point to temper our excitement about that potential impact
Speaker 4: with the overlay of the timelines that it takes to
Speaker 4: actually properly investigate and develop and launch medicines.
Speaker 3: Very cool stuff I was thinking about too. We had
Speaker 3: a conversation with Kathy Wood and talking about AI certainly
Speaker 3: in healthcare and drug developments as well. Yeah, definitely bullish.
Speaker 3: So we highly recommend folks check out that conversation, but
Speaker 3: Jenny always loved touching base with you. Certainly an important
Speaker 3: area to have on our radar, and that of course
Speaker 3: was Jenny Rook, founder managing director of Generadventures. Good to
Speaker 3: check in with her, joining us from the West Coast,
Speaker 3: San Francisco,