AI Cancer Cures Slowed by Chip Shortage, Says UK’s Biggest Tech Boss
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AI cancer cures slowed by chip shortage, says UK’s biggest tech boss
Image caption:
Rene Haas was previously on the board of British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca
By Faisal Islam
Economics editor
Published 3 hours ago
The chief executive of Cambridge-based chip designer Arm Holdings has said that artificial intelligence will find a cure for cancer that humans cannot in our lifetimes.
Rene Haas said while modelling how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer is currently "too complex" a problem, computers are "going to solve it" in the future.
Haas also told the BBC that AI would lead to widespread humanoid robots within five years, but its rapid growth is being held up by a shortage of chips needed to build data centres. He was sceptical about the idea chips could be manufactured in the UK in the future.
Arm designs the brains or CPUs of microchips already used in hundreds of billions of phones, cars, smartwatches, and gadgets across the globe. Earlier this summer, the company’s peak share price amid the AI boom made it, in cash terms, the most valuable UK-based company in history.
Haas, who stepped down from the board of British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in April, said:
"AI is going to… find a cure for cancer that today you and I, other humans [could] not in our lifetimes. I believe in our lifetime, AI will help cure cancer."
He added:
"Modelling a cell, modelling a human, modelling how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer – it’s too complex a problem… However, as we feed more and more of the models into these computers, they’re going to solve it."
Prof Chris Bakal, from the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and CEO of Sentinal4D, agreed that the real question was no longer whether we use AI, but what we feed it. He said in labs like his, they are training AI on data generated themselves from patient samples.
"It is not scraped from the internet. It does not need a giant data centre to run. The future of medical AI will not belong to whoever builds the biggest computer. It will belong to whoever has the right measurements."
Bakal added that this kind of prediction could cut years from the time it takes to develop new treatments.
Job Losses ‘Overstated’
In a wide-ranging interview, Haas said the chips Arm designs would fuel self-learning AI robots "in a very large way" in manufacturing, cleaning, security, building bridges, and doing repairs within a decade.
He stated:
"With artificial intelligence, these robots can see, learn, and essentially be reprogrammed for new tasks… In the service industry, the robot that was programmed to make a bed can also learn how to arrange the towels in a room, or clean the dustbins, or whatever you want to go off and do."
Addressing concerns over mass job losses from AI, Haas said while there would be some change for workers, "the estimates of jobs going away and being completely replaced by machines is a bit overstated" and outweighed by new opportunities.
