Eli Lilly CEO says he has 'at least 1 or 2 AIs running' during every meeting he's in

David Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly, has revealed that he incorporates artificial intelligence into every meeting he attends. During a recent discussion on the 'Cheeky Pint' podcast hosted by Stripe co-founder John Collison, Ricks shared his practice of leveraging AI to enhance his understanding of scientific data. "I read a lot of medical journals and participate in conferences where data is presented," Ricks noted. He emphasized his commitment to staying informed by collaborating with scientists, stating, "I have at least one or two AIs running every minute of every meeting I'm in, and I just am asking science questions." While Ricks has experimented with various AI models, he expressed a preference for Anthropic's Claude and xAI's Grok over OpenAI's ChatGPT for scientific inquiries, citing ChatGPT's verbosity. He mentioned the importance of verifying AI-generated references, as inaccuracies can hinder productivity. Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, acknowledged Ricks' endorsement of Grok, stating on X, "Cool that David Ricks uses @Grok as his daily AI advisor." Ricks joins a growing list of prominent CEOs who are integrating AI into their daily routines, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, who uses Copilot for managing communications, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang, who employs AI as a tutor. Eli Lilly has seen impressive growth recently, with stock prices rising approximately 31% due to successful sales of its GLP-1 weight-loss drug, Zepbound, and diabetes treatment, Mounjaro. However, Ricks cautioned that AI still has a long way to go in drug development. He estimates that scientists currently understand only about 10 to 15% of human biology, indicating that AI will not significantly improve until more comprehensive biological knowledge is established. To advance this understanding, Ricks advocates for substantial investments in robotics to generate the necessary training data for AI. He believes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should be leading this initiative, which is not currently underway in the United States. Ricks highlighted the need for continuous robotic experiments to create the extensive datasets required for training AI models effectively.