The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil

AI will scale up to modeling ever larger systems in simulation—from proteins to protein complexes, organelles, cells, tissues, and whole organs. Doing so will enable us to cure diseases whose complexity puts them out of the reach of today’s medicine. For example, the past decade has seen the introduction of many promising cancer treatments, including immunotherapies like CAR-T, BiTEs, and immune checkpoint inhibitors.[20] These have saved thousands of lives, but they frequently still fail because cancers learn to resist them. Often this involves tumors altering their local environment in ways we can’t fully understand with current techniques.[21] When AI can robustly simulate the tumor and its microenvironment, though, we’ll be able to tailor therapies to overcome this resistance. Likewise, such neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s involve subtle, complex processes that cause misfolded proteins to build up in the brain and inflict harm.[22] Because it’s impossible to study these effects thoroughly in a living brain, research has been extremely slow and difficult. With AI simulations we’ll be able to understand their root causes and treat patients effectively long before they become debilitated. Those same brain-simulation tools will also let us achieve breakthroughs for mental health disorders, which are expected to affect more than half the US population at some point in their lives.[23]