AI models need more data about biology, and OpenAI is paying to create it

The OpenAI Foundation is funding a new effort called Data for Public Health.

Last year, the clinical trial policy analyst Ruxandra Teslo posted an idea for super-charging medical AI systems: use data from failed biotech companies.

By bidding at their bankruptcy proceedings, she proposed, it might be possible to obtain detailed regulatory filings, manufacturing strategies, and safety data—information usually kept hidden as valuable trade secrets. She called these documents “ biotech’s lost archive ” and said they could be used to help train AIs that would act as powerful co-pilots in the often opaque drug approval process.

Today, the OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit parent of OpenAI , said it would fund her idea as part of a new effort it calls Data for Public Health, which aims to help artificial intelligence make big leaps in medicine by funding the creation of “high-quality scientific datasets.”