Can AI cure cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease in 10 years? Anthropic CEO's claims vs scientific reality

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said that artificial intelligence (AI) could help humanity overcome some of its biggest medical challenges, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and mental illness, within the next decade. This is in line of his previous statement in August wherein he said that the biggest impact of powerful artificial intelligence may not be chatbots or coding, but medicine. He has argued that AI could eventually help scientists prevent and treat most diseases, potentially accelerating decades of biological research into just a few years.

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Speaking during Anthropic's IPO roadshow, in a conversation spotted by Fireside Alpha, Amodei said that these diseases could become "relics of the past" in less than 10 years. He also described a future in which AI could help solve problems that humanity has struggled with for centuries. “You know, if today we look at things like cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, mental illness, these will be relics of the past in, I think, less than a decade,” he said. Stating that AI will bring in the age of miracles, Amodei explained that it could only happen when companies developing the technology takes risks seriously. He said that the benefits of AI will depend not just on how powerful these systems become, but also on whether the companies behind them can earn public trust. "I think if we do this right, we can create an age of miracles where humanity is able to solve problems that have eluded us for millennia," he said.

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Earlier, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis also suggested that AI can compress years of laboratory research into weeks. Systems like AlphaFold have successfully predicted the structures of over 200 million proteins, proving AI can solve complex biological puzzles that once took scientists decades.

What could medicine look like by 2036?

Rather than producing a single breakthrough cure for cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease, AI is expected to transform how these conditions are detected, treated and managed. It could help researchers develop personalised cancer vaccines and immunotherapies by analysing the genetic characteristics of an individual's tumour and designing treatments tailored to their specific cancer. In heart care, wearable devices equipped with AI could continuously monitor heart rhythms and other health indicators, identifying warning signs early and helping prevent heart attacks and strokes through timely intervention.

AI could also make drug development more efficient when combined with organoids, miniature lab-grown models of human organs. These models could help researchers understand how medicines affect human tissue and identify potentially ineffective or unsafe treatments before they enter expensive clinical trials. This could improve trial success rates and help bring safer therapies to patients faster. Ultimately, AI's biggest contribution to medicine by 2036 may not be instant cures, but more precise diagnosis, faster drug development and personalised treatment.

However, scientists and pharmaceutical companies caution that identifying a promising molecule using artificial intelligence is only the first step in developing a medicine. Testing a new drug in humans can take around 10 years and cost roughly a billion dollars, while AI cannot replace clinical trials or predict long-term side effects with certainty. The complexity of diseases is another major obstacle. Cancer comprises hundreds of distinct conditions that can mutate over time, while the underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease remain poorly understood. Without a deeper understanding of the biology behind these conditions, AI cannot guarantee a cure.