He previously described it as 'most major disease' that he thinks AI could cure in the next 5-10 years.

Amodei might be an even bigger optimist than I am, but he's not lacking credentials on neither the biology nor AI side.

Accusing him of fraud or mania like some here do seems unwarranted.

We don't even understand how mental illness works. There's so much work to do before we can even imagine the possibility of "curing" them.

I'm genuinely trying to understand the argument you're making here. What sort of "credentials" entitle a person to claim their god-technology will cure all diseases within the year 2026?

It smells to me like "might be an even bigger optimist than I am" means you're also part of the rationalism cult and that it's literally impossible for you to say something negative about Amodei.

Amodei has made no such claim; at most he expressed a belief or hope.

Being an optimist does not make me part of any cult and there is no need for you to argue that I could not say something negative about Amodei.

Seems unwarranted? He is clearly following the MO of Musk by hyping up his company as being capable of doing the most ridiculous innovations but all it does manage to do is bump the stock. Terraforming Mars, tunnels for self-driven cars, curing cancer/all mental illness etc.

Yes. Expressing a belief or hope to achieve something in the next 5-10 years is not a claim of capabilities.

If you want to argue that Amodei is dishonest and only says these things to 'bump the stock', you can make that argument, but it's clearly speculation.

He's either dishonest or delusional.

When someone promises something that's so far out there as to be nearly impossible, and *without an actionable plan to get from here to there*, then they're either dishonest or delusional.

Or simply optimistic.

He hasn't promised anything, in fact he acknowledges that his projections might be wrong.

His stated plan is to scale AI and compress 100 years of biomedical progress into 10 years.

No, “simply optimistic” doesn’t capture it.

Like, if your optimism is great enough, big enough, then you lose touch with what’s actually feasible. That’s where delusion starts.

It might be possible to compress 100 years of research into 10 years. Maybe. But it won’t be these 10 years.

Check the math. Say we get huge advances in AI tomorrow that double the speed of biology research. And imagine we then have 3 years where research is now 2x faster (which, again, would be absolutely enormous).

How much faster do the remaining 7 years have to be, in order for the entire 10 years to capture 100 years of research? Roughly 13x.

Basically, every year you’re not already at >10x is a year you’re falling behind. And AI is nowhere even remotely close to doubling the speed of research, much less 10x-ing it.

That's not what Amodei is predicting, he does not talk about a scenario where biologists use AI as a tool to double the speed of research.

He is predicting the arrival of powerful AI in the next few years.

His plan is to scale that model up to millions of instances working in parallel, directing experiments and research autonomously.

In this way he hopes to accelerate the rate of important discoveries by at least factor 10 to achieve 100 years worth of progress.

Amodei's statement is at the level of Archimedes saying "I'm guessing that in the next 50 years we'll probably use this to fly to the moon" after discovering Greek fire. Sure, it's "optimistic", and may even point towards something that will eventually happen, but way way way past the point of delusion.

> he's not lacking credentials on neither the biology nor AI side

More importantly, he is lacking credentials in medicine.

I guess, if you discount his actions and musings.

Okay but let's for the sake of argument that Claude magically has all the information required cure all of these families of diseases. How does Amodei intend to deal with the fact the regulation of medical devices is a slow, lengthy process for a lot of very good reasons like preventing something like thalidomide going on the market? Is Claude going to magically spin up considerably more regulatory capacity out of thin air, and will it gather evidence for safety and effectiveness at the required standard to show to those regulators?

This is just one problem I have with his claim, there are many others.

Read the letter being discussed. Alongside claims of medical innovations, he also says it can be used to speed up government bureaucracies.

Now, whether that's true is obviously it's own question. But I do think if AI can cure cancer and Alzheimer's rapidly, that improving the regulatory and approval processes at agencies is a much lower bar.

A lot of those bureaucratic regulations are written in blood and are slow and deliberate for a reason. Throwing them all out means more thalidomide disasters: Chesterton's fences and all that.

Credentials are one signal sure, but his MASSIVE financial incentive to hype the product is another one that should probably get much more weight in your analysis.

That would make for boring discussion, there are a hundred other people in the comments already accusing Amodei of being dishonest for financial gain.

I don't think it's the case, and that Amodei legitimately believes in what he has been saying for years.

Whenever I wonder how investors can fall for this bs I only have to read the comments to see examples of how

"'m open to the idea that AI could help medical research, but just claiming it'll end "alzheimers, cancer, heart disease and mental illness" with absolutely 0 evidence isn't a particularly grounded claim that warrants any discussion."

Agree with this if it was something a random person said over coffee or lunch.

But when its the CEO of a company that is about to IPO saying it, its very very different and more concerning.

Does narcissism qualify as a mental illness? There might be one more step here to complete the circle. Both Amodei and Altman have dropped some real shockers over the years and instead of seeing a reaction it's almost as if they've normalized the kind of talk that ought to see you in a room with soft walls.

> I'm open to the idea that AI could help medical research, but just claiming it'll end "alzheimers, cancer, heart disease and mental illness" with absolutely 0 evidence isn't a particularly grounded claim that warrants any discussion.

This is up there with the claims Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation made during their start-up that the foundation would "end all disease within our lifetime." So far they haven't ended one disease, and meanwhile they quietly watered down their claim to soften the language to update to "cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the 21st century."