Dr. Emilia Javorsky

And so the idea here is the more and more data we put into this, the more and more capable systems we can make.

And one day we'll make a system that is more capable than humans.

And then thus we'll be able to do types of reasoning or types of insights that humans would not really be able to do or discover.

And assuming in that set is a cure for cancer.

Correct, yes.

So this is where the AI to cure cancer piece breaks down, is what is cancer and what is a cure?

And those are two actually really fuzzy terms, even for the experts in the arena.

So when we think about cancer in the early days,

The way you thought about cancer was like, there's some cell, it gets a mutation, it goes rogue, and it makes a tumor, right?

And that was the original sort of simplistic understanding of cancer.

And as our understanding of oncology has gone on, there's been these papers that have come out called the Hallmarks of Cancer, right?

And as we find new biology and new ways to measure things, we're getting further and further away from that simple explanation of one cell with a mutation that goes rogue and makes a tumor.

It's actually a much more complex disease involving the immune system and the blood supply.

And even within one tumor,

different things are happening in different parts of that tumor.

And so the story of cancer has been, as we push science forward, we've uncovered more and more complexity to the disease, not less.

So there hasn't been sort of a march towards a simplifying or unifying hypothesis.

It's been a march towards an ever more complex and individualized type of disease.

So fundamentally, when we think about the complexity of cancer, it is sort of a shadow self.

And there is a book I highly recommend folks read called The Emperor of All Maladies that really delves into this problem of why this is the most complex disease of all, because it is something that is co-evolving with us.