The Boldest Claim Yet: DeepMind CEO Says AI Could Cure All Diseases Within Decade

I think it’s fair to say AI is both overhyped and underrated. Some will tell you that its promise has been grossly exaggerated, whilst some, like the experts we’re talking about today, say AI will cure all diseases in a decade.

Now, I’ve heard hype, but this is on another level. However, as you shall see, the guys making the claim kind of know what they are talking about.

Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, predicts that AI could eradicate all diseases within the next decade, significantly reducing drug development time from years to potentially months. He says:

It takes, on average, ten years and billions of dollars to develop just one drug. We could maybe reduce that down to months, or even weeks.

DeepMind’s AI has successfully unravelled over 200 million protein structures in just one year. This used to take years of manual effort, and so the AI’s success in unravelling proteins could revolutionise drug discovery.

Hassabis and his research partner, John Jumper, were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their groundbreaking work in AI-based protein structure prediction.

This is what I meant when I said these guys are some of the most equipped people to make the grand claim that AI will cure all illnesses in the next decade.

This is not to say we can take this prediction to the bank, but rather to say these guys have already demonstrated that AI will massively reduce the time and cost to develop new drugs.

AI technologies are already enhancing healthcare by improving diagnostics, expediting drug discovery, and personalising patient treatment—or so we have heard.

Hassabis acknowledges potential risks of AI misuse and emphasizes the importance of aligning AI development with human values to ensure safety and ethical use. I’ll be honest with you, I sometimes feel that the cat is already out of the bag.

Anyway, I think it’s safe to assume AI will help in curing some diseases in the next decade. It might not be 100% like Hassabis says, but even 10% would be great. So, either way, we could be in for some positive developments in the coming years.

I have some chronic stuff I wouldn’t mind seeing cured. Will Big Pharma stand by whilst their multi-billion empire is threatened, though? We shall see.