Business APAC
April 22, 2025
Could we get rid of all human diseases in the next ten years? The big question is, can AI cure all diseases within a decade? A top scientist, Sir Demis Hassabis, who won a Nobel Prize and leads Google’s DeepMind AI lab, recently said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) might make this possible. This surprising idea has people excited, but also asking serious questions: Is this realistic, or just a dream?
Hassabis shared the 2024 Nobel Prize for helping create AlphaFold. AlphaFold is an amazing AI program that figured out a huge puzzle in biology. Now, Hassabis believes AI could do even more. “I think one day maybe we can cure all diseases with the help of AI,” he said. When asked if this could happen soon, he added, “Maybe within the next decade or so, I don’t see why not.”
How AI Already Changed Science: The AlphaFold Story
Why does Hassabis believe this? Because AI tools like AlphaFold have already done amazing things. For 50 years, scientists struggled to figure out the exact 3D shape of proteins. Proteins are tiny machines in our bodies, and their shape controls what they do. Knowing the shape helps us understand health and sickness.
AlphaFold figured out the shapes of almost all proteins known to science – over 200 million of them! It did this incredibly fast and accurately. This was a huge leap for biology. Now, scientists everywhere use AlphaFold’s work to speed up research on malaria vaccines, figure out why some bacteria resist medicines, and even create tools to break down plastic waste.
The next version, AlphaFold 3, can even understand how proteins work with DNA and other important molecules in our bodies.
Hassabis’s Big Idea: AI as a Super-Fast Disease Fighter
Hassabis thinks this same AI power can be used to fight diseases directly. He points out that making just one new medicine usually takes about 10 years and costs billions of dollars. With AI, he suggests, “We could maybe reduce that down… to maybe months or maybe even weeks.” AI could quickly figure out which possible drugs might work against a disease by predicting how they interact with proteins and other molecules.
He even thinks that soon, AI might be smart enough to suggest new science ideas all by itself, helping researchers find cures faster than ever before. His optimism makes people wonder, Can AI cure all diseases within a decade?
But It’s Not That Simple: Big Challenges Ahead
While the idea of curing all diseases sounds wonderful, getting there is extremely hard. This makes us ask seriously, Can AI cure all diseases within a decade? First, “all diseases” includes a massive range of problems – from catching a cold, to lifelong conditions like diabetes, to genetic problems you’re born with, even just getting older. Finding a single “cure” for everything is likely impossible.
Second, AI needs really good information (data) to learn from. Healthcare information is often messy, incomplete, or stored in different ways that don’t work together. If the AI learns from bad or unfair data, it might make mistakes or even make health problems worse for some groups of people.
Also, even if AI helps find a potential new cure, that cure still needs to be tested carefully in labs and on people (clinical trials) to make sure it’s safe and actually works. Getting government approval for new medicines takes a long time.
Being Careful with Powerful AI
Hassabis himself warns that we need to be careful. Powerful AI could be used by bad people for harmful things. We also need to make sure that as AI gets smarter, it does what we want it to do and follows human ideas of right and wrong.
Keeping patient information private and safe is also super important. People, including doctors and patients, need to trust AI for it to be truly helpful.
A Decade of Change, If Not Cures?
So, can AI cure all diseases within a decade? That’s a very ambitious goal, and there are huge challenges. But Demis Hassabis’s idea shows how much potential AI has. Thanks to tools like AlphaFold, AI is going to change medicine in big ways.
It will likely lead to faster discoveries, better treatments, and a deeper understanding of our bodies. Even if the dream of ending all disease takes much longer, the journey using AI to fight sickness will surely be one of the most important stories of our time.
Also Read: US China AI Chip Export Ban: Did Washington Just Cripple Nvidia and Ignite a Tech Cold War?
