On November 5, reports from foreign media indicate that OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman recently discussed the impact of artificial intelligence on biology and healthcare at the WSJ Tech event, stating that AI has the potential to make death a choice. He believes that in the next 12 to 18 months, AI will bring significant results in biology, health research, and disease treatment, driving noticeable advancements in related technologies.
Greg Brockman stated that biology is one of the fields where AI can have a significant impact, and that new technologies may provide more solutions to the diseases and aging issues faced by humanity. He specifically mentioned that in the future, humans may even discuss whether death could become a choice, and he believes this possibility is not entirely out of reach. This viewpoint also echoes Elon Musk's previous assessments regarding the extension of human lifespan.
AI Will Bring Significant Changes to Biology and Healthcare
In January of this year, Elon Musk stated in an interview with Peter Diamandis that extending lifespan, or even achieving a certain degree of semi-immortality, is a very promising problem to solve. He believes that the aging process of various parts of the human body is highly synchronized, which may be driven by a unified biological mechanism. If relevant mechanisms can be identified and altered, humanity may have the opportunity to slow aging and extend lifespan. Just a few days ago, Elon Musk reiterated that longevity technology is on the way.
The application of AI in biological research has already yielded some concrete results. Previously, foundational biological models such as Evo and Evo 2 were introduced, capable of analyzing DNA sequences and attempting to generate new genetic sequences. OpenAI has also launched GPT-Rosalind, specifically aimed at life sciences research, to assist researchers with tasks in genomics, protein analysis, drug chemistry, and biomedical research, accelerating the formulation and validation of research hypotheses by integrating scientific literature, databases, and specialized tools.
These advancements indicate that AI is changing the way biomedical research is conducted. In the past, researchers needed to spend significant time reading literature, screening candidate drugs, and designing experiments. Today, AI can assist in handling some of these processes and continuously adjust research directions based on experimental feedback. However, the acceleration of research and discovery processes by AI does not mean that the mechanisms of aging have been completely unraveled, nor does it equate to humanity having the capability to extend lifespan or achieve semi-immortality.