TL;DR
An AI model worked for 64 hours, mostly without a human steering it, and designed small proteins meant to clamp onto the toxins in scorpion venom. Outside labs tested 211 of those designs and 17 gripped their target, about 1 in 12, the company that ran the experiment reports. None has been shown to stop venom from doing harm, and nothing has been tried in a cell, an animal or a person. What may be changing is the clock on the first step of making a medicine: inventing the molecule. If a machine can do that in days for a target this hard, the slow parts of medicine become the safety tests, the factories and the human trials, which have not moved at all.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 5 milestones, starting with "An AI-designed binder is shown to neutralize a scorpion toxin in cells or animals by 2029"; our labeled speculation on what it adds up to; and every source.