For most people AI == LLM.

I've done a bit of work on this front a few years ago. We had a number of simulators that can tell you the likelihood that something binds to a specific protein, and you're basically just searching through all possible compounds to find things that bind to a target while minimizing their interactions with other proteins that would be known to cause problems in the human body. When we find promising candidates, we send them off to a lab to synthesize and test in vitro.

This kind of search problem isn't exactly easy to automate mainly because naive solutions are very expensive. It's never been a problem of outputting nonsense. The automations use the same evaluation metrics as human researchers.

the low likelihood of LLM being involved in any active pharmaceutical R&D efforts is enough for me to wager

Been real since the 60s, nobody uses it after it caused a Hep B outbreak

The communicator already is and HAL that everyone thought would take 200 years is here now. The science fiction future we dreamed about as children has become a self fulfilling prophecy. For good or bad we are in it now, right up to our necks.

The new injectors use lasers instead of springs and plungers, so it's a brand new version of a discontinued tech.

Yep, this isn't LLM. This is some proprietary "DIOSynVax computational pipeline".

Annoying that everyone reads this and thinks it's, "hey chatgpt make me a vaccine. Do not hallucinate"

Fun to see anti-AI hysteria merge with anti-vaxx conspiracy theories.