Observations · AI and Business Since 2022
Healthcare
AI crossed from administrative tooling into science itself: AlphaFold 3 modeled drug-molecule interactions, its creators won the 2024 Nobel in Chemistry, and ambient clinical documentation became the fastest-adopted hospital software in memory.
What drove it
AlphaFold and Isomorphic Labs in drug discovery, ambient scribes (Nuance DAX, Abridge), GPT-4-class models for clinical documentation, and reasoning models cutting hallucinations on medical questions.
The evolution
2023
GPT-4 passed medical licensing benchmarks, and the Biden executive order made healthcare a named AI-policy priority.
- GPT-4: AI passes the bar exam
GPT-4 reset expectations of what AI could do in professional domains — law, medicine, finance, coding — and became the benchmark every rival measured against for over a year.
- Biden signs the sweeping AI executive order
The US government's first binding intervention in frontier AI development, setting compute-threshold reporting before any legislation existed.
- EU agrees the AI Act — the world's first comprehensive AI law
It set the global regulatory benchmark for AI — the 'Brussels effect' — and covered frontier model providers for the first time anywhere.
2024
AlphaFold 3 moved AI into drug-interaction modeling, and its creators won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- AlphaFold 3 extends AI into drug discovery's core
It broadened AI's reach into the molecular machinery of life — the foundation of modern drug discovery.
- AI wins the Nobel Prizes
An unprecedented scientific endorsement: machine learning recognized as a transformative tool across disciplines.
2025
GPT-5 made health one of its headline domains as ambient clinical documentation became hospitals' fastest-adopted software.
- GPT-5 becomes the default for ChatGPT's hundreds of millions
Hundreds of millions of free users got their first reasoning model; the launch's incremental feel also fed the year's bubble debate.
2026
The EU's Digital Omnibus delayed high-risk obligations, giving medical AI deployments a longer compliance runway.
- EU delays AI Act high-risk rules in the Digital Omnibus deal
A pragmatic admission that the oversight infrastructure wasn't ready — the world's most ambitious AI law recalibrated under simplification pressure.
Key sources
The papers, announcements, and reports that document this industry's shift. Each also lives in the Library.
What businesses do differently
Health systems buy AI to give clinicians time back — documentation first, diagnosis support carefully and slowly. Pharma R&D treats computational structure prediction as standard infrastructure.
What this means for founders and leaders
The wedge is workflow relief, not diagnosis. Sell time back to clinicians, prove safety, and treat regulatory rigor as your moat — healthcare punishes shortcuts harder than any other market.