Is AI Really About to Solve Human Disease?

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News Commentary, News

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I’ve had the privilege of talking to many brilliant people about artificial intelligence. And when you ask them to imagine the most beneficial consequences of this technology, they almost always give the same answer: medicine. The dream is dazzling. Superintelligent AI will cure stubborn diseases and disorders—cancer, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s. It will diagnose all our illnesses, design new lifesaving drugs, accelerate clinical trials, and pair with wearables to fight chronic illness and extend our health spans. But which of these promises are realistic? Which are outlandish hype? And what, exactly, can AI do for us in medicine right now? To separate fact from fantasy, I talk with Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Lloyd Minor Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/29/if-ai-can-diagnose-patients-what-are-doctors-for https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-ai-isnt-replacing-radiologists?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:00.0	What's up? It's Todd McShay, host of the McShay Show at The Ringer and Spotify.
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0:39.2	It's going to be a great season.
0:43.2	And I hope you'll be with us at the McShay show every step of the way.
0:47.0	Today, AI and medicine.
0:57.1	I've talked to all sorts of people about artificial intelligence, people who think it's the most important technology in the future, and people who think it's a bubble.
0:58.1	People who are doomers and people who are optimists.
1:01.3	And when I talk to folks who are most positive and hopeful about this technology, and I ask
1:05.9	them, what's the best thing it could possibly give us?
1:10.0	It's striking that they all give the same answer.
1:13.7	It will solve disease.
1:16.3	Super-intelligent AI will cure cancers, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's.
1:21.8	It's almost as if, of all the mysteries in the realm of forbidden knowledge, the mysteries of
1:26.2	human biology are the most tantalizing.
1:29.3	And so we imagine AI as a door that once opened will lead us into longer, healthier lives, free of debilitating disease.
1:38.3	So I've been following the story very closely, AI and medicine.
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