The CEO, Dario Amodei, of Anthropic, one of the leading AI labs believes that strong AI is only 1-2 years away, probably 2027. And once strong AI is available, 100 years of progress in biology, medicine, economics, etc. will happen in 5-10 years, or 2032-2037.
As I [Dario Modei] wrote in Machines of Loving Grace [Essay, October 2024], powerful AI could be as little as 1–2 years away, although it could also be considerably further out.
I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal “country of geniuses” were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. [From The Adolescence of Technology – Amodei, January 2026]
To summarize the above, my basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years. I’ll refer to this as the “compressed 21st century”: the idea that after powerful AI is developed, we will in a few years make all the progress in biology and medicine that we would have made in the whole 21st century.
Possibilities (Predictions):
Reliable prevention and treatment of nearly all natural infectious disease. [Fast evolving strains like those that develop in hospitals may be more difficult to eradicate].
Elimination of most cancer. ([But] It would not be surprising if an assortment of rare, difficult malignancies persists.)
Very effective prevention and effective cures for genetic disease.
Prevention of Alzheimer’s.
Improved treatment of most other ailments. [diabetes, obesity, heart disease, autoimmune diseases].
Biological freedom. [weight, physical appearance, reproduction, and other biological processes will be fully under people’s control]
Doubling of the human lifespan. (Once human lifespan is 150, we may be able to reach “escape velocity”, buying enough time that most of those currently alive today will be able to live as long as they want, although there’s certainly no guarantee this is biologically possible.)
Most mental illness can probably be cured. [PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, addiction, etc.]
Conditions that are very “structural” may be more difficult, but not impossible. [psychopath, intellectual disabilities]
Effective genetic prevention of mental illness seems possible.
Everyday problems that we don’t think of as clinical disease will also be solved. [quick to anger, others have trouble focusing or are often drowsy, some are fearful or anxious, or react badly to change]
Distribution of health interventions. [distributing health interventions throughout the world] (Overall, I think 5-10 years is a reasonable timeline for a good fraction (maybe 50%) of AI-driven health benefits to propagate to even the poorest countries in the world. A good goal might be for the developing world 5-10 years after powerful AI to at least be substantially healthier than the developed world is today, even if it continues to lag behind the developed world.)
Economic growth. (Overall, a dream scenario—perhaps a goal to aim for—would be 20% annual GDP growth rate in the developing world, with 10% each coming from AI-enabled economic decisions and the natural spread of AI-accelerated technologies, including but not limited to health. If achieved, this would bring sub-Saharan Africa to the current per-capita GDP of China in 5-10 years, while raising much of the rest of the developing world to levels higher than the current US GDP.)
Food security. (Genetic engineering is currently improving many crops even further. Finding even more ways to do this—as well as to make agricultural supply chains even more efficient—could give us an AI-driven second Green Revolution, helping close the gap between the developing and developed world.)
Mitigating climate change. (We can expect that AI will lead to improvements in technologies that slow or prevent climate change, from atmospheric carbon-removal and clean energy technology to lab-grown meat that reduces our reliance on carbon-intensive factory farming.)
Of course, he also believes that the risks of powerful AI could lead to catastrophic results instead of the beneficial results listed above (See his essay The Adolescence of Technology).
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