Artificial Intelligence: How can it be useful in drug discovery

5 3. THE NEW LANGUAGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) Artificial Intelligence can be defined as the way through which a human intelligent behavior can be transformed into an artificial system, a possibility for simulating the human intelligence through computers for example, so how the human language can be transferred into a computational one, in the sense that humans try to teach machines and computers to think and act like them (Mariano, 2020). The aim of AI is to construct machines and computer models able to simulate the processing of information performed in nature by the human brain (in other words, Artificial Intelligence is the science of producing intelligent machines, computer programs capable of imitating human thinking and plan activities (Sharma et al; 2022). These systems in fact are intelligent: AI permits machine models to reason, learn and communicate like humans (Mariano, 2020). Artificial Intelligence can also be seen as a new technical language that employs the computer technology for mimicking and increasing knowledge, a term that represents the acquired ability of technologies to simulate human thinking (Amisha et al; 2019; Liu et al; 2021). AI has the faculty to better identify hit and lead compounds: the first is a compound that binds to a biological target (for example a receptor) and the other is a compound that has pharmacological activity but still requires to be optimized for its therapeutic effect and safety for being employed, leading to the improved management of drug development (Debleena et al. 2021; Graham L. Patrick, 2017). The process of new drug design uses the tools of the so called CADD (Computer-Aided Drug Design) related to AI that is made of computational methods for developing new compounds because it’s capable to efficiently reduce costs and time of processing data: in silico method is a CADD procedure that represents the evaluation of safety and efficacy of the chemical molecule of interest performed by computers and the screening procedure is another tool that CADD uses for finding proper drug candidates among chemical libraries (databases that contain information on chemical molecules) that refers to the activity of detecting the proper pharmacological features that a candidate must have before having the consent for being used and this approach can also analyze the potential adverse effects of drug candidates for optimizing hit and lead compounds (Arya et al; 2021). Since these techniques are computational, then AI reconsidered and improved them by replacing the traditional tools with their improved version: