Q&A: AI is coming for lots of jobs. What about that of the cancer researcher?

Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI and co-creator of ChatGPT,  keeps saying artificial intelligence will help cure cancer. Altman’s going further these days, envisioning a future where an AI essentially replaces the principal investigator.

In a discussion last month that was widely circulated this week on social media, Altman recounted chatting with a cancer researcher about a time when an AI would issue experimental plans and tasks to human scientists to complete.

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“Then at the end of that, cancer will be cured,” Altman said in the interview.

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