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Comment by unsupp0rted

18 days ago

What $700 billion can't do is cure cancers, Parkinsons, etc. We know because we've tried and that's barely a sliver of what it's cost so far, for middling results.

Whereas $700 billion in AI might actually do that.

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unsupp0rted

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wolfram74  18 days ago

Your name is well earned! "can't cure cancers" is impressively counterfactual [0] as 5 year survival of cancer diagnosis is up over almost all categories. Despite every cancer being a unique species trying to kill you, we're getting better and better at dealing with them.

[0]https://www.cancer.org/research/acs-research-news/people-are...

  • XCSme  18 days ago

    Treating cancer is not the same as curing it. Currently, no doctor would ever tell you you are "cured", just that you are in remission.

  • unsupp0rted  18 days ago

    Yes, we're getting better at treating cancers, but still if a person gets cancer, chances are good the thing they'll die of is cancer. Middling results.

    Because we're not good at curing cancers, we're just good at making people survive better for longer until the cancer gets them. 5 year survival is a lousy metric but it's the best we can manage and measure.

    I'm perfectly happy investing roughly 98% of my savings into the thing that has a solid shot at curing cancers, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases. I don't understand why all billionaires aren't doing this.

    • danaris  18 days ago

      Ah, yes: "well, we can't cure cancer or autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, but I'm willing to invest basically all my money into a thing that's...trained on the things we know how to do already, and isn't actually very good at doing any of them."

      ...Meanwhile, we are developing techniques to yes, cure some kinds of cancer, as in every time they check back it's completely gone, without harming healthy tissue.

      We are developing "anti-vaccines" for autoimmune diseases, that can teach our bodies to stop attacking themselves.

      We are learning where some of the origins of the neurodegenerative diseases are, in ways that makes treating them much more feasible.

      So you're 100% wrong about the things we can't do, and your confidence in what "AI" can do is ludicrously unfounded.

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