ChronicleBio founder says curing diseases through AI requires more than intelligent models

Fidji Simo, former OpenAI executive and co-founder of biotechnology startup ChronicleBio, stated that while she believes artificial intelligence can cure all diseases in the future, simply making AI models more sophisticated is not sufficient to achieve this goal. In response to comments by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Simo agreed that the AI industry suffers from public distrust because of unfulfilled promises. Amodei highlighted that claiming AI will cure cancer has become an empty and deceptive phrase in the eyes of most people, making it necessary to actually cure diseases to gain credibility. The main bottleneck, according to Simo, lies in the availability of adequate biological data. Even with advanced reasoning capabilities, AI cannot solve medical problems without access to data necessary to understand specific diseases. Simo emphasized that cancer is the area where AI can make the most significant progress, thanks to vast data sets accumulated over decades in genomics, pathology, medical imaging, and clinical outcomes. ChronicleBio was founded by Simo with the goal of building databases to better understand chronic diseases. Simo left her full-time position at OpenAI in July to focus on recovering her health, after dealing with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). Simo reinforced that the expansion of model intelligence and biological infrastructure need to advance in parallel for AI to truly cure diseases.