“There is a ‘treasure trove of medicines that could be used for so many other diseases.’” Those are the words of Donald C. Lo, former head of therapeutic development at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, as told to Kate Morgan of the New York Times. What an exciting statement, one that indicates doctors and scientists are on the verge of all manner of pharmaceutical advances and cures.
To grasp the potential meaning of all this, it’s useful to contemplate how Henry Ford made cars for “the great multitude.” His achievements were an effect of work divided. While one man working alone could, if wildly skilled, spend a lifetime creating one automobile of questionable mechanical value, thousands of men working together could produce millions of cars at increasingly affordable prices.
The division of labor is easily the greatest economic concept mankind has ever happened upon until, perhaps, the division of thought. We already see the latter with humans, thus the rise of corporate headquarters meant to drive collaboration among humans. It’s obviously succeeded brilliantly, but what about the division of thought between man and machines that don’t require lunch breaks, weekends or vacations?
Stop and think about what already expansive human minds can achieve if they quite literally can multiply their genius endless times over. It was said that the discovery of coal was the productivity equivalent of gifting each worker with something like fifteen full-time assistants, so what will the proliferation of AI mean for the world’s greatest thinkers?
The happy answer to the above question is that we increasingly don’t need to speculate or theorize. As the quote that begins this opinion piece alludes, scientists are more and more working alongside thousands of mechanized “scientists” to “to search among existing medicines for treatments that work for rare diseases.”
It’s called repurposing, and as pharmaceutical firms know very well, it’s not new to the sector. What’s increasingly new is the use of machines to speed up the search. Division of labor, meet division of thought. Which is difficult to underestimate when contemplating the possibilities.
To see why, it’s useful to return to the happy truth that the only limits to human achievement are knowledge. When knowledge is created, human flourishing soars.
In the 19th century pneumonia was “Captain of Man’s Death.” In the 21st most have no cause to worry about what used to kill rampantly. What changed was soaring wealth that was matched with remarkable scientific talent, followed by a major killer being brought to its knees.
It raises optimistic questions about what’s ahead from the world’s greatest pharmaceutical corporations. With their matching of minds with AI, along with growing amounts of investment meant to push on the always expanding frontier of AI, the frontier of human advance borne of knowledge expands in limitless fashion.
It allows the non-scientific minded to look ahead to a tomorrow that will look nothing like today in a health sense. Former sure-fire killers rendered yesterday’s news by a division of thought that’s in its infancy in a mechanical sense.
We’re on the doorstep of pharmaceutical advances and cures that will render the present primitive by comparison. Knowledge is wealth and progress, and scientists matched with automated thought are on the verge of producing a brilliant abundance of knowledge.
