OpenAI has a plan to cure cancer! It’s … not very good. 

Learn more by reading “How AI Can, and Can't, Cure Cancer” at https://curecancer.ai/ 

You can support me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Siliconversations 

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This video was:
Written, directed and narrated by Siliconversations
Illustrated and edited by Maris Tockler

Sources:

How AI Can, and Can't, Cure Cancer https://curecancer.ai/ 

Looking Glass Universe: The Embarrassingly Simple Reason AI Can't Cure Cancer -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFcyWFK1q8I

Nature News: AI linked to explosion of low-quality biomedical research papers - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01592-0 

Claim: There are approx. 37 trillion cells in the human body 
Source: Annals of Human Biology: An estimation of the number of cells in the human body - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/03014460.2013.807878 

Claim: There are approx. 7 billion billion billion atoms in the human body 
Source: The Wikipedia article “Composition of the human body” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body says that there are 7 octillion (billion billion billion) atoms in the human body, citing this blog as their source: https://web.archive.org/web/20250207160554/https://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_04.html 
I was suspicious of this source because it claimed that 99% of the body's mass is composed of Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon, while the Wikipedia article shows a diagram claiming that the body is 3% Nitrogen. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/201_Elements_of_the_Human_Body.02.svg/500px-201_Elements_of_the_Human_Body.02.svg.png 
I don’t know which of these claims is correct, and I didn’t want to go down a whole research rabbit hole about it. Fortunately, the Wikipedia article also provides a table that shows estimates of the mass and atomic percent of each atom in a 69 kg body, sourced from the book: 
Emsley J (25 August 2011). Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements. OUP Oxford. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-19-960563-7. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
I did some quick maths using the table, and based on the values provided for Oxygen, Carbon and Hydrogen, I estimated that a 69kg human body has 6.5, 6.87 and 6.65 Octillion atoms, respectively. Some people weigh more than 69kg, so 7 Octillion is a good enough estimate for the throwaway claim I made in this YouTube video. 

AI Use Disclosure: YouTube generated the subtitles, which I partially formatted using Claude.

Siliconversations

A satirical comic dialogue exposing the gap between AGI hype and reality, specifically around OpenAI's claims that AGI will cure cancer. The piece highlights fundamental problems: lack of high-quality medical data, the impossibility of simulating human biology at scale, the inability to speed up biological processes, and the years-long clinical trial requirements. It argues that AI companies may have actually delayed cancer research by diverting investment from biotech while using the cancer cure narrative as a PR shield. Inspired by Dr. Emilia Javorsky's essay 'How AI Can and Can't Cure Cancer.'

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