Tech giants see a cure for cancer in AI. But Eli Lilly’s CEO finds it ‘not particularly good’ at solving biology or chemistry problems

The quest for a cancer cure dates back thousands of years. Some of the earliest known research dates to ancient Egypt, where Imhotep, the physician and architect to King Djoser, described a human tumor on papyrus around 2600 B.C. 

Now, a growing chorus of tech leaders is singing the praises of AI as the key to solving the medical mystery that has puzzled physicians for millennia. It’s what Google President Ruth Porat predicted last October. And it’s why Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei coined...