Association Swiss Health Data Space’s Post

Will your future PdD advisor be an AI or should you rather train to become a skilled technician? Over the weekend, I read an insightful article titled "Machines of Loving Grace," written by Dario Amodei, the Founder and CEO of Anthropic. Dario, who holds a PhD in neuroscience and systems biology, shares his perspective on the potential of artificial intelligence in the next 5 to 10 years. He predicts that powerful AI, often referred to as AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), could be ready as early as 2026. According to Dario, this advanced AI could design biological experiments more effectively and efficiently than Nobel laureates, potentially accelerating scientific discoveries by a factor of 10 to 100. The implications are significant, with the possibility of eradicating infectious diseases and cancer in a timeframe of 5 to 10 years instead of the 50 to 100 years typically expected. Dario explicitly outlines AI's projected impact across various fields, including biology and medicine—where his insights are particularly detailed—as well as climate change, poverty, and inequality, and even the future of work and what it means for our lives. While it is understandable that he, as CEO of one of the leading AI companies, emphasizes the positive aspects, we must critically consider how these advancements could influence academic and pharmaceutical research, along with our healthcare system and beyond. Even if our societal and legislative processes cannot be accelerated tenfold, we have to experiment in clearly defined frameworks. One such framework is our #expedition into the Swiss health data space organized by GdS Verein Gesundheitsdatenraum Schweiz. Over the course of the expedition a small number of motivated and digitally native individuals – we call them salutonauts – claim their health data, test and improve the current health data infrastructure and test AI solutions to structure and interpret their data. https://lnkd.in/e3KcxaQN Mathis Brauchbar Felix Schneuwly Bernd Wollscheid Elke Mittendorf Akademie Menschenmedizin Jörg Goldhahn

I really enjoyed reading the very long post by Dario Amodei "Machines of Loving Grace." I will provide the highlights from my perspective on AI for health research. https://lnkd.in/gPUFPgc5 Summary: Dario Amodei's essay envisions AI compressing 50-100 years of medical progress into 5-10 years, potentially eliminating most diseases, doubling human lifespan, and revolutionizing healthcare delivery. Key Insight: The breakthrough insight is viewing AI not just as data analysis tools, but as autonomous scientists and researchers who can perform all tasks biologists do - designing experiments, controlling lab equipment, inventing new methods, and directing research programs. This is fundamentally different from the current "AI for data analysis" paradigm. For my students: To those working at the intersection of AI and healthcare - you're not just building better analysis tools, you're developing the next generation of autonomous scientists. Think of breakthroughs like CRISPR - with AI researchers working alongside humans, we could create 10x such innovations in a fraction of the time. Your work in drug discovery, clinical trials, and healthcare AI is helping build a future where most diseases are curable and quality healthcare reaches everyone. Keep pushing boundaries - every problem in healthcare/medicine you solve today could help save millions of lives tomorrow.

As indicated in my post yesterday, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, recently published an essay entitled "Machines of Loving Grace," https://lnkd.in/enWhZc9b. For the reasons stated below, Amodei's essay is extremely ominous, and it should be viewed as a dire warning to humanity. Amodei argues that "most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be." He predicts that, by 2026, AI will be "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields" and will be equal to a “country of geniuses in a datacenter”. He expects that, within 5-10 years, AI-enabled science will eradicate most infectious diseases, cure most cancers, prevent most genetic diseases, resolve most mental health problems, and double the human lifespan to 150 years. Amodei says that the "uploading" of human minds into AI systems is "possible," but he does not expect that to occur in the next 10 years. As I explained in a previous post, Ray Kurzweil believes that such a "merging" of human minds with AI systems will occur by 2045. https://lnkd.in/e8BFpwEb. Amodei is "not as confident that AI can address inequality and economic growth as . . . it can invent fundamental technologies." He concedes that "advanced health interventions and especially radical increases in lifespan or cognitive enhancement drugs" might be reserved "only for the rich”. He admits that "embryo screening" to remove genetic abnormalities and other serious health risks will raise "a number of societal issues" -- as Aldous Huxley memorably explored in "Brave New World." As discussed in my post yesterday, Amodei believes that "most or all humans may not be able to contribute meaningfully to a sufficiently advanced AI-driven economy," and their ability to derive meaning from work could therefore disappear in an AI-dominated world. Amodei's predictions of a "utopian" future driven by AI are fundamentally anti-human. The technological changes he contemplates are likely to produce a highly unequal and unjust society dominated by a "super-human" tech elite with god-like powers. Amodei's predictions echo those of other tech leaders like Ray Kurzweil. As discussed in my post cited above, Kurzweil and many other tech leaders advocate "transhumanism," a monstrous philosophy that wants to transcend the human race by merging human minds with AI systems, thereby creating "super-human" beings who could potentially live forever. It's long past time for all of us to take these horrendous ideas very seriously and to demand effective government action to prevent such visions from being realized. Does anyone truly believe that humans know how to create AI systems that will act with love, compassion, mercy, and conscience? Only God can endow us with such divine attributes, and history has shown that human attempts to exercise god-like powers inevitably produce the most cruel and destructive tyrannies.

To understand the future of AI and its impact on our sciences, economy, and daily lives, I highly recommend reading Dario Amodei's essay, "Machines of Loving Grace." Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, envisions transformative AI developments, including AGI, as soon as 2026. He highlights AI's potential to revolutionize healthcare, biology, and economics—speeding up discoveries and improving life quality by addressing challenges like diseases and economic restructuring. However, he also emphasizes the need for ethical alignment to prevent harm and ensure AI serves humanity positively. This essay is essential for anyone interested in the future of AI. https://lnkd.in/eT28pRne

It’s exciting to read insights on AI's impact in biology that goes beyond advancement in data analysis & interpretation or protein folding and drug design. From the article by Dario Amodei: "If our core hypothesis about AI progress is correct, then the right way to think of AI is not as a method of data analysis, but as a virtual biologist who performs all the tasks biologists do, including designing and running experiments in the real world (by controlling lab robots or simply telling humans which experiments to run – as a Principal Investigator would to their graduate students), inventing new biological methods or measurement techniques, and so on. It is by speeding up the whole research process that AI can truly accelerate biology." And, then he continues: "my basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years. I’ll refer to this as the “compressed 21st century”: the idea that after powerful AI is developed, we will in a few years make all the progress in biology and medicine that we would have made in the whole 21st century." This is a great read, first of its kind (to my knowledge), that provides such a perspective on AI’s broader impact. While some predictions may seem ambitious, it’s hard not to be fascinated by all the possibilities that AI could bring!

Rethinking Progress in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Last month, significant developments took place in the realm of AI. The MHRA released a policy paper on regulating AI in health, while EFPIA issued a position statement targeting legislators and regulators of AI. Additionally, Nature published a paper that delved into the illusion of understanding and knowledge that AI can sometimes create. These events prompted me to explore this topic further in my editorial on DarkDrug - [Rethinking Progress in an Age of AI](https://lnkd.in/gaN4gCts). Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking once stated, "Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last unless we learn how to avoid the risks." The astonishing aspect of AI is not just its rapid integration into academia, health, and business, but also how it is reshaping our society through individual adoption. This realization struck me when I collaborated with my six-year-old daughter on a science poster for a competition. We utilized AI to illustrate the advancements made through scientific innovation in the past 30 years. What amazed me was that the AI-generated image was a product of my daughter's vision and instruction, with me simply facilitating her access to my Adobe AI program. The end result was not only excellent but also thought-provoking, as the generated child was missing a digit. We are entering a new age that will fundamentally transform our society. The opportunity to enhance our productivity and thinking through AI tools is one we should not overlook or exploit recklessly. We have truly opened Pandora's box of AI, and its contents are now unleashed. However, have we considered what remains at the bottom of the box? #AI #MHRA #SOCIETY #LIFESCIENCES #EFPIA #RESEARCH #PATIENTS #PHARMA #INNOVATION #ABPI Kishan Rees Alan Karthikesalingam MD PhD Dr Samin Saeed Karen Mullen Junaid Bajwa Umang Patel Andrew Miles Amit Aggarwal Professor Shafi Ahmed Professor Brian D Smith

Summary of AI health predictions by Ray Kurzweil. 'Today, scientific progress gives the average American or Briton an extra six to seven weeks of life expectancy each year. When AGI gives us full mastery over cellular biology, these gains will sharply accelerate. Once annual increases in life expectancy reach 12 months, we’ll achieve “longevity escape velocity”. For people diligent about healthy habits and using new therapies, I believe this will happen between 2029 and 2035—at which point ageing will not increase their annual chance of dying. And thanks to exponential price-performance improvement in computing, ai-driven therapies that are expensive at first will quickly become widely available. This is ai’s most transformative promise: longer, healthier lives unbounded by the scarcity and frailty that have limited humanity since its beginnings.' https://lnkd.in/dX7pTjsU AI will push us to revise the Pention policy sooner than we think 🤔

🚨 **Mission: Pull the Plug!** 🚨 Politicians, it’s up to you! 💼🛑 The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) has one clear mission: **“Convince major powers to halt frontier AI development worldwide before it's too late.”** [1] For the first time, this document cuts through endless debates and takes a bold political stance: - Risks of AI are often just opinions without solid evidence. - The highest risk level could threaten humanity itself. - Leaders must urgently establish an international "kill switch" to stop frontier AI if necessary. This approach doesn’t aim to stop all AI progress but ensures we can hit the brakes if things get dicey. 🛑🔧 After chatting with peers in top AI companies, many agree this stance is crucial and timely. For instance, **Jack Clark**, co-founder of Anthropic and ex-director at OpenAI, voiced his support publicly [2]. 👏 Here's the catch: - We need strong proof that such a "kill switch" is necessary soon. - Without it, humanity's risks could skyrocket. And this proof must be backed by scientific analysis, not just more opinions. Unfortunately, we lack such analysis currently. It’s tough using existing knowledge on AI risk assessment. But there’s hope! 🌟 By proving that syncing AI goals with human goals is fundamentally impossible, we could justify the need for a "kill switch." This proof should draw from exopsychology and exosociology research. I plan to dive deeper into this in Part 2 of my long read “Reimagining Contact.” Stay tuned! 📖✍️ #AIRisks #HumanRisks #Exopsychology #Exosociology 1️⃣ https://lnkd.in/gpwEKvRt 2️⃣ https://lnkd.in/g-aeBQEA

In an era where AI is already reshaping our world, the boundary between the living and the algorithmically driven is blurring. 🧬 ➡️ Can AI's deep dive into biology enlighten us about life itself, or will it merely mirror our existing knowledge, trapped within the confines of its programmed world? ➡️ AI is now embarking on an ambitious journey, delving deep into the essence of life by analyzing vast troves of biological data. In a groundbreaking feat, AI has swiftly identified cellular marvels like the Norn cells, pushing the boundaries of our understanding in mere weeks — a process that historically spanned over a century for humans. ➡️ By assimilating massive cell databases, AI models like those at Stanford are beginning to unravel complex biological narratives, predicting cellular behaviors and potentially paving the way for revolutionary medical advances. ➡️ However, as these "foundation models" proliferate, they usher in debates on their limitations and the ethical quandaries of bio-engineered futures. Could these intelligent systems illuminate the quintessential attributes of life, or might they inadvertently steer us towards a new era of synthetic biology, fraught with unprecedented ethical dilemmas? ❓ In navigating the vast, uncharted territories of biology, AI might soon offer us profound insights or confront us with profound questions: What does it genuinely mean to be alive, and can machine intelligence grasp or even redefine this concept? Read the full story on the New York Times: https://lnkd.in/gJ3M5ug9 #SyntheticBiology #Proteins #AI #Future #Innovation ---- 💡 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 - you can have real-time insights, recommendations (a lot more than I share here) and conversations with my digital twin via text, audio or video in 28 languages! Join >5000 users who went before and go to app.thedigitalspeaker.com to sign up and take our connection to the next level! 🚀

Where the human brain (still) has an edge over AI? In 1928, the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming returned from a two-week vacation and realized he had made a significant oversight. In his haste to leave for his holiday, he had left a messy pile of petri dishes on his workstation. As he began to dispose of the dishes, something unusual caught his eye: a mold had formed around the bacteria in one of the petri dishes. Upon closer examination, Fleming made a startling discovery. The mold wasn’t just growing—it was actively inhibiting the spread of the bacteria. This observation led Fleming to wonder if the mold could be used to fight infections. Over the following weeks, his experiments with this novel substance led to the development of penicillin, revolutionizing the treatment of infectious diseases, saving over 500 million lives over the past century. Penicillin’s unlikely origin story holds a key insight into how human creativity may continue to flourish in the age of artificial intelligence. The past year has seen a surge of concern—some might say bordering on hype or hysteria—about AI’s potential to take over many jobs. In January, for instance, the International Monetary Fund reported that up to 40% of global jobs were at risk from AI. From cashiers to coders, workers across various sectors are being replaced by machines… https://lnkd.in/ghx2cS8D