- The invitation only group represents a collective of companies at the forefront of ethical technological and business model innovation working on solutions to our world’s most significant challenge
- BenevolentAI will be part of the global effort to ethically deploy the use of AI to create a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient world
London, 21 April 2022, BenevolentAI, a leading clinical-stage artificial intelligence (AI) enabled drug discovery company, today announced that it has joined the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Innovators Community, to help advance and scale governance and policies that support the responsible deployment of AI. BenevolentAI will join the world’s most promising start-ups and scale-ups in a common effort to engage with public and private sector leaders and contribute to developing new solutions to pressing global challenges and build future resilience.
Joanna Shields, CEO at BenevolentAI and Co-Chair of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), commented: “Billions of dollars are invested in drug development each year, yet persistently high failure rates and low efficacy are leaving too many patients without hope for a cure. It is critical we reinvent our approach to deliver on this pressing global health need. Our mission at BenevolentAI is to bring about a transformation in drug discovery by harnessing AI to better understand disease biology and ultimately improve patient outcomes. We are proud to collaborate with the World Economic Forum to help ensure AI is ethically deployed for the benefit of patients worldwide.”
As part of the Global Innovators Community, BenevolentAI will participate in the WEF’s Annual Meeting, taking place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, from Sunday the 22nd to Thursday the 26th of May, where CEO Joanna Shields will join two panels on ‘Unlocking the Power of Digital Health’ and on the ‘Use of Responsible AI for Societal Gains’. Topics on the agenda will also include the pandemic recovery and harnessing the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Being the first global in-person leadership event since the start of the pandemic, the Annual Meeting 2022 will be a crucial opportunity for members to reconnect and will be the starting point for a new era of global responsibility and cooperation.
“The World Economic Forum is happy to have BenevolentAI join our Global Innovators community,” said Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of Artificial Intelligence & Machine learning at the World Economic Forum. “We are delighted to engage BenevolentAI in our Platform's work to champion and demonstrate how responsible and trustworthy AI can help deliver on societal goals in critical areas like healthcare.”
About BenevolentAI
BenevolentAI is a leading, clinical-stage AI drug discovery company. Through the combined capabilities of its AI Platform, scientific expertise and wet-lab facilities, BenevolentAI is well-positioned to deliver novel drug candidates with a higher probability of clinical success than those developed using traditional methods. BenevolentAI has a consistently proven track record of scientifically validated discoveries. The BenevolentAI Platform™ powers a growing in-house pipeline of over 20 drug programmes, spanning from target discovery to clinical studies, and it maintains successful commercial collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies. BenevolentAI also identified Eli Lilly's baricitinib as a repurposing drug candidate for COVID-19, which has been authorised for emergency use by the FDA. BenevolentAI is headquartered in London, with a research facility in Cambridge (UK) and a further office in New York.
About the World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. It was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests. The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance. Moral and intellectual integrity is at the heart of everything it does.
Media Contacts
Rajin Kang - VP Communications
Tricia Persad-Bevil – JPA Health
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