The U.S. just bet $1 billion that AI supercomputers can turn most cancers from 'death sentences' to 'manageable conditions' within 8 years | Fortune

"The U.S. government is making a billion-dollar bet that AI can do what decades of "moonshots" have failed to: make cancer more manageable and much more survivable. In a newly announced partnership with Advanced Micro Devices, the Department of Energy (DOE) will build two of the world's most advanced AI supercomputers-Lux and Discovery-to accelerate research across fusion energy, national defense, and cancer treatment, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Reuters the machines could, in "the next five or eight years," help turn "most cancers, many of which today are ultimate death sentences, into manageable conditions.""

"For all their power, Lux and Discovery can't learn without fuel. Ideker argues the field's biggest challenge is integrating multimodal data-from genetic sequences to tissue scans to body imaging-needed to predict how a patient will respond to treatment. He compares cancer's data shortage to other AI domains. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have the internet; self-driving cars like Waymo have millions of logged hours on the road. Cancer, by contrast, has only as much data as hospitals are able and willing to share. "The cancer space is more data-limited," Ideker said. "We have to invest just as heavily in capturing and linking that data as we do in compute.""

The Department of Energy will build two advanced AI supercomputers, Lux and Discovery, in partnership with Advanced Micro Devices to accelerate research in fusion energy, national defense, and cancer treatment. Energy officials predict the machines could help convert many currently fatal cancers into manageable conditions within five to eight years. Researchers note that compute alone is insufficient; the primary bottleneck is multimodal clinical data integration, including genetic sequences, tissue scans, and imaging. Large language models benefit from abundant public data, while cancer research depends on limited hospital-shared datasets. Substantial investment in capturing, linking, and sharing patient data is required alongside compute.

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