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Saying you'll cure cancer with AI without specifying the type of cancer is like declaring you'll solve crime with Batman. Way too broad to be useful, but makes a good headline.
When we say "She has cancer" we mean "a cancer". (Hopefully she doesn't have all of them!). Why couldn't the sentence "AI will cure cancer" mean "a cancer" as well?
Sad to hear of Ilene Ruhoy’s experience here. She is a wonderful clinician who has enormously helped other patients with complex diagnostic paths and with diagnoses that are severely neglected.
I keep coming back to the fact that if you asked even GPT 3 how to solve climate change, it would give you a perfectly good answer. We have this idea that AI will “solve climate change” at some point in the future. What we really mean is “give us a different answer to climate change that has zero cost”.
Climate change is not currently being solved because of politics and existing systems, not because of a lack of intelligence.
There are so many similar situations in medicine. Intelligence is not enough- you also need a system capable of acting with that intelligence.
AI could be transformational, but not without systemic change to support it.
Saying "AI will cure cancer" is like saying "science will cure cancer" or "doctors will cure cancer". In general, all three statements are true about technological progress. > Second, AI is used to disproportionately benefit the privileged while worsening inequality. That's bullshit. Computers and other gadgets always start out as toys of the rich, but they quickly trickle down to everyone else. Compare the multi-tho…
But is this a function of moore's law? I have to say that OpenAI's training costs seems to be growing exponentially, not declining exponentially.
"AI will..." is either the som of human hopes and dreams, or the sum of human fears. I wonder if industrialization was anything like this (though I don't think ML will end up being comparable to the industrial revolution).
Or Sam Altman pumping his fund.
"AI will..." is either the som of human hopes and dreams, or the sum of human fears. I wonder if industrialization was anything like this (though I don't think ML will end up being comparable to the industrial revolution).
>> is either the som of human hopes and dreams, or the sum of human fears Or Sam Altman pumping his fund.
Saying you'll cure cancer with AI without specifying the type of cancer is like declaring you'll solve crime with Batman. Way too broad to be useful, but makes a good headline.
I'm curious about the presumed language. When we say "She has cancer" we mean "a cancer". (Hopefully she doesn't have all of them!). Why couldn't the sentence "AI will cure cancer" mean "a cancer" as well?
When you say "AI will cure cancer" that is not a singular event, so you assume cancer in the plural. You would have to say "AI will cure some forms of cancer" if you didn't mean the plural here.
Saying you'll cure cancer with AI without specifying the type of cancer is like declaring you'll solve crime with Batman. Way too broad to be useful, but makes a good headline.
- Grab a cancer (or virus, bacteria, etc.)
- Sequence it
- AI will develop a custom therapy for that cancer
In broad strokes, it's not hard to develop a therapy for any specific cancer or other disease in a specific individual. There are several broad strategies:
- A targeted, custom phage to kill a bacteria (or extrapolate to killing a type of cells)
- A custom vaccine to make your body make antibodies specific to a disease
- And so on....
This is a ≈2 year research effort to do in each case, and perhaps a ≈10 year validation effort, not to mention regulatory. By that point, the patient is dead, or AIDS has mutated a few dozen times, and regardless, you need a massive research team to do so. And to do so, you've spent many million dollars on a research team that whole time.
"AI will cure [X]" consists of AI doing the same thing instantly. I go to a doctor. My chronic disease is sequenced. My specific immune system is encouraged to attack that specific disease. I'm cured.
(And yes, we each have a very different immune system; see MHC for an example of how and why)