Arm CEO: AI will help humans cure cancer, but the chip shortage must be resolved first.

Beating AI News (Dongcha) reports that Arm CEO Rene Haas believes healthcare will become AI’s "killer app". In an interview with BBC, he predicted AI will help humanity cure cancer within our lifetimes, drastically cutting the time required for new drug discovery and testing. Haas noted that humanity currently struggles to fully simulate cells, the human body, and cancer’s impact on DNA. As data and computing power continue to grow, AI has the potential to solve these highly complex problems. However, a key bottleneck right now is chips. Haas said AI firms are building multiple gigawatt-scale data centers, and demand for chips and memory has outstripped existing supply. Building new chip factories typically costs tens of billions of dollars and takes two to three years, making it hard to close the gap in the short term. But cancer researchers are less optimistic about "piling on computing power". Professor Chris Bakal of London’s Institute of Cancer Research said his team trains AI directly using patient samples, eliminating the need for massive data centers. The real key to healthcare AI may not be who has the largest computers, but who has access to better patient data.