5 ms·

Besides cancer isn't really "a disease" but rather "a family of diseases" that can vary a lot. Even breast cancer can be one of many different cancers. It's li

Besides cancer isn't really "a disease" but rather "a family of diseases" that can vary a lot. Even breast cancer can be one of many different cancers. It's like saying "we'll cure infectious diseases"

traceroute66 1mo ago
> It's like saying "we'll cure infectious diseases" Don't worry, I'm sure that's his next blog post. Right after Claude has finished solving famine and poverty. ;)
- Applejinx 1mo ago
  Technically, killing everybody is one way of solving famine and poverty. How weird that all those humans seem not to trust the logic of their betters ;P
  - subygan 1mo ago
    you're right. it coincidentally solves cancer and infectious diseases as well. the ultimate utopia
    - lesuorac 1mo ago
      Look, it's really simple we'll have 3 laws that the robots follow and nothing will go wrong.
      - kennywinker 1mo ago
        Except instead of bots that follow asimov’s three laws we’re getting bots that follow the ferengi rules of acquisition.
      - no-name-here 1mo ago
        Ah the 3 laws have edge cases? Actually our industry will just release bots with none of the 3 laws, including bots for military use where their whole purpose is the opposite of the 3 laws.
- kennywinker 1mo ago
  The solution to famine and poverty is not exactly a mystery. We have more than enough food on the planet for everyone, and we have the ability to deliver bombs or soldiers or amazon packages to anywhere in the world in days or hours. Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone. What people mean when they say “solve famine” is can we make people not starve without actually doing or changing anything - which is of course impossible.
  - delis-thumbs-7e 1mo ago
    > Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone. We do this. Have you ever heard of UN World Food Programme? $14B funding in 2022 (since then dropped drastically, guess why). Has it solved famine? No. Would it solve famine if it got the funding it needs? Unlikely. Because you cannot just spend billions of dollars to send amazin food parcels across the world and expect that to fix climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education, and propably 100 other issues all contributing to the fact that we still have not end hunger. And no, AI won’t solve it either.
    - calvinmorrison 1mo ago
      > (since then dropped drastically, guess why). > Has it solved famine? No. Hoist by your own petard
      - kennywinker 1mo ago
        Assuming everything they said is true, how on earth is that a self-own? You know that saving millions of lives every year is better than NOT saving millions of lives, right? Just because something doesn't solve the problem 100% doesn't mean it's not VERY VERY good.
    - kennywinker 1mo ago
      The UN estimates it would cost $93 billion a year to end world hunger (https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/11/1166397 https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/11/1166397) So one would expect $14b/year would solve about 14/93 = 15% of world hunger. > The World Food Programme supports over 152 million people annually and delivers life-saving food assistance where needed most. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Programme) An estimated 757 million people are food insecure (https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stubbornly-high-for-three-consecutive-years-as-global-crises-deepen--un-report https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stub...) 152/757 = the world food program helps ~20% of people who are food insecure. That's well in the ballpark of the estimated 15% spend. If we spend that extra $93b, we'd be well within the range to actually stop world hunger. Yes, "climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education" are still issues. No, you don't have to solve those problems to feed people. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
fnord123 1mo ago
We will cure virus.
- FeteCommuniste 1mo ago
  We will cure carpet. We will cure desk. We will cure lamp.
  - kridsdale1 1mo ago
    That really got out of hand. You may want to lay low.
    - andrekandre 1mo ago
      wait till they get the 'war on carpet' on, no one will be spared...
- kanzure 1mo ago
  > We will cure virus. It is possible to prevent most viruses by recoding the human genome (requires embryo engineering or pre-embryo engineering) to use alternate codons that existing natty viruses don't use. This wouldn't prevent synthetic viruses from being developed that use the alternate codons, of course. See (1) https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2016-05-10/ultra-safe-cell-line/ https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2016-05-10/ultr... and (2) https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2017-05-09/ultrasafe-cell-line/ https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2017-05-09/ultr... and (3) https://x.com/RokoMijic/status/1720875112541364535 https://x.com/RokoMijic/status/1720875112541364535 for some background. As for "curing cancer", I suspect that Anthropic or OpenAI will use their high status/reputation to launder the existing solutions (germline, p53, enhanced DNA damage repair pathways, higher tumor-suppressor-to-oncogene copy number, more robust tumor-suppressor networks, more self-anti-cancer apoptosis, CD47 suppression, etc) that society has refused to accept. They might have enough reputation to get people to look at these ideas. It won't cure people with stage 5 turbo-cancer a.k.a the walking dead, but hopefully we won't be moving the goal posts _that_ much on them.
alphazard 1mo ago
"Cancer isn't a single disease" is often shouted from the Dunning-Kruger peak of cancer research. I think it was popularized by an explainer video on Youtube, and now it's being memed. The people who think this way want to legitimize funding a particular research niche that they benefit from. A more sophisticated view is that cancer (one idea) is an problem of rates (like most things in biology) and there is a tumor burden per unit time from whatever causes vs. the immune system's capacity to detect and destroy them per unit time. As humans age, the balance tips in one direction. If the balance is too far off for too long, tumors accumulate, doctors take notice, and assign whatever labels to the condition. Looking into particular causes of tumors (and calling each cause its own cancer) can create a vast research program that employs a lot of people, since there are so many mutations that lead to tumors. But interrupting the development of a particular mutation is not going to have the same society-changing effect that solving the fundamental issue of rates would.
- inciampati 1mo ago
  And this business of rates is also why getting the immune system—such as via personalized vaccine—to recognize a tumor is functionally "curing cancer". The problem is it isn't one disease in the sense that different tissues, cell types, and systems are affected leading to different parameters in the design and delivery of said vaccines.
- root-parent 1mo ago
  >> "Cancer isn't a single disease" is often shouted from the Dunning-Kruger peak of cancer research. Literally first phrase on Cancer Wikipedia entry.... [1] "Cancer is a group of diseases involving uncontrolled cell growth typically resulting in tumors with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body...." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer
- bonsai_spool 1mo ago
  [dead]
- datsci_est_2015 1mo ago
  Is there something like a meta-Dunning-Kruger, where someone invokes Dunning-Kruger in a way that itself is a potential Dunning-Kruger phenomenon? I'm inclined to believe that the thing - that everyone intelligent says is complicated - is actually complicated. I would be surprised if the thing - that everyone intelligent says is complicated - is actually simple. This is almost like an application of the conspiracy theory gambit where you try to find out how many people would have to be "in on it" in order to disprove the theory's likelihood. Like flat earth.
dcre 1mo ago
I have seen people suggest we will figure out how to prevent all infectious disease.
siva7 1mo ago
Claude cured a deaf person. Just look up news. All this negativity on HN is depressing..
- GPerson 1mo ago
  Do you believe Anthropic is going to cure almost all human diseases including cancer in 5-10 years?
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
overgard 1mo ago
Not to mention, hasn't the pharmaceutical industry taught us that curing diseases is a bad capitalist strategy? After all, why cure something if you can simply treat it, expensively, indefinitely.
nshshbr 1mo ago
I always think the most salient comparison would be to say, "We will solve all computer bugs and eliminate all computer viruses and security vulnerabilities." No one ever even thinks to promise this, I think because it is obvious that even a superintelligent computer will never be totally free of errors or invulnerable to attack. Or, even better, they never even respond to surging memory costs by saying, "Don't worry, our brilliant AI will figure out how to produce cheaper memory." Because they know it won't. I genuinely don't know how to interpret the bizarre clichés these people think in. Cure cancer. Make death optional! I can't tell if they're crazy, stupid, or liars.

traceroute66 1mo ago

> It's like saying "we'll cure infectious diseases" Don't worry, I'm sure that's his next blog post. Right after Claude has finished solving famine and poverty. ;)

Applejinx 1mo ago
Technically, killing everybody is one way of solving famine and poverty. How weird that all those humans seem not to trust the logic of their betters ;P
- subygan 1mo ago
  you're right. it coincidentally solves cancer and infectious diseases as well. the ultimate utopia
  - lesuorac 1mo ago
    Look, it's really simple we'll have 3 laws that the robots follow and nothing will go wrong.
    - kennywinker 1mo ago
      Except instead of bots that follow asimov’s three laws we’re getting bots that follow the ferengi rules of acquisition.
    - no-name-here 1mo ago
      Ah the 3 laws have edge cases? Actually our industry will just release bots with none of the 3 laws, including bots for military use where their whole purpose is the opposite of the 3 laws.
kennywinker 1mo ago
The solution to famine and poverty is not exactly a mystery. We have more than enough food on the planet for everyone, and we have the ability to deliver bombs or soldiers or amazon packages to anywhere in the world in days or hours. Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone. What people mean when they say “solve famine” is can we make people not starve without actually doing or changing anything - which is of course impossible.
- delis-thumbs-7e 1mo ago
  > Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone. We do this. Have you ever heard of UN World Food Programme? $14B funding in 2022 (since then dropped drastically, guess why). Has it solved famine? No. Would it solve famine if it got the funding it needs? Unlikely. Because you cannot just spend billions of dollars to send amazin food parcels across the world and expect that to fix climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education, and propably 100 other issues all contributing to the fact that we still have not end hunger. And no, AI won’t solve it either.
  - calvinmorrison 1mo ago
    > (since then dropped drastically, guess why). > Has it solved famine? No. Hoist by your own petard
    - kennywinker 1mo ago
      Assuming everything they said is true, how on earth is that a self-own? You know that saving millions of lives every year is better than NOT saving millions of lives, right? Just because something doesn't solve the problem 100% doesn't mean it's not VERY VERY good.
  - kennywinker 1mo ago
    The UN estimates it would cost $93 billion a year to end world hunger (https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/11/1166397 https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/11/1166397) So one would expect $14b/year would solve about 14/93 = 15% of world hunger. > The World Food Programme supports over 152 million people annually and delivers life-saving food assistance where needed most. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Programme) An estimated 757 million people are food insecure (https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stubbornly-high-for-three-consecutive-years-as-global-crises-deepen--un-report https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stub...) 152/757 = the world food program helps ~20% of people who are food insecure. That's well in the ballpark of the estimated 15% spend. If we spend that extra $93b, we'd be well within the range to actually stop world hunger. Yes, "climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education" are still issues. No, you don't have to solve those problems to feed people. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

fnord123 1mo ago

We will cure virus.

FeteCommuniste 1mo ago
We will cure carpet. We will cure desk. We will cure lamp.
- kridsdale1 1mo ago
  That really got out of hand. You may want to lay low.
  - andrekandre 1mo ago
    wait till they get the 'war on carpet' on, no one will be spared...
kanzure 1mo ago
> We will cure virus. It is possible to prevent most viruses by recoding the human genome (requires embryo engineering or pre-embryo engineering) to use alternate codons that existing natty viruses don't use. This wouldn't prevent synthetic viruses from being developed that use the alternate codons, of course. See (1) https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2016-05-10/ultra-safe-cell-line/ https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2016-05-10/ultr... and (2) https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2017-05-09/ultrasafe-cell-line/ https://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/hgp-write/2017-05-09/ultr... and (3) https://x.com/RokoMijic/status/1720875112541364535 https://x.com/RokoMijic/status/1720875112541364535 for some background. As for "curing cancer", I suspect that Anthropic or OpenAI will use their high status/reputation to launder the existing solutions (germline, p53, enhanced DNA damage repair pathways, higher tumor-suppressor-to-oncogene copy number, more robust tumor-suppressor networks, more self-anti-cancer apoptosis, CD47 suppression, etc) that society has refused to accept. They might have enough reputation to get people to look at these ideas. It won't cure people with stage 5 turbo-cancer a.k.a the walking dead, but hopefully we won't be moving the goal posts _that_ much on them.

alphazard 1mo ago

"Cancer isn't a single disease" is often shouted from the Dunning-Kruger peak of cancer research. I think it was popularized by an explainer video on Youtube, and now it's being memed. The people who think this way want to legitimize funding a particular research niche that they benefit from. A more sophisticated view is that cancer (one idea) is an problem of rates (like most things in biology) and there is a tumor burden per unit time from whatever causes vs. the immune system's capacity to detect and destroy them per unit time. As humans age, the balance tips in one direction. If the balance is too far off for too long, tumors accumulate, doctors take notice, and assign whatever labels to the condition. Looking into particular causes of tumors (and calling each cause its own cancer) can create a vast research program that employs a lot of people, since there are so many mutations that lead to tumors. But interrupting the development of a particular mutation is not going to have the same society-changing effect that solving the fundamental issue of rates would.

inciampati 1mo ago
And this business of rates is also why getting the immune system—such as via personalized vaccine—to recognize a tumor is functionally "curing cancer". The problem is it isn't one disease in the sense that different tissues, cell types, and systems are affected leading to different parameters in the design and delivery of said vaccines.
root-parent 1mo ago
>> "Cancer isn't a single disease" is often shouted from the Dunning-Kruger peak of cancer research. Literally first phrase on Cancer Wikipedia entry.... [1] "Cancer is a group of diseases involving uncontrolled cell growth typically resulting in tumors with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body...." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer
bonsai_spool 1mo ago
[dead]
datsci_est_2015 1mo ago
Is there something like a meta-Dunning-Kruger, where someone invokes Dunning-Kruger in a way that itself is a potential Dunning-Kruger phenomenon? I'm inclined to believe that the thing - that everyone intelligent says is complicated - is actually complicated. I would be surprised if the thing - that everyone intelligent says is complicated - is actually simple. This is almost like an application of the conspiracy theory gambit where you try to find out how many people would have to be "in on it" in order to disprove the theory's likelihood. Like flat earth.

dcre 1mo ago

I have seen people suggest we will figure out how to prevent all infectious disease.

siva7 1mo ago

Claude cured a deaf person. Just look up news. All this negativity on HN is depressing..

GPerson 1mo ago
Do you believe Anthropic is going to cure almost all human diseases including cancer in 5-10 years?
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]

overgard 1mo ago

Not to mention, hasn't the pharmaceutical industry taught us that curing diseases is a bad capitalist strategy? After all, why cure something if you can simply treat it, expensively, indefinitely.

nshshbr 1mo ago

I always think the most salient comparison would be to say, "We will solve all computer bugs and eliminate all computer viruses and security vulnerabilities." No one ever even thinks to promise this, I think because it is obvious that even a superintelligent computer will never be totally free of errors or invulnerable to attack. Or, even better, they never even respond to surging memory costs by saying, "Don't worry, our brilliant AI will figure out how to produce cheaper memory." Because they know it won't. I genuinely don't know how to interpret the bizarre clichés these people think in. Cure cancer. Make death optional! I can't tell if they're crazy, stupid, or liars.