The chief executive of Arm Holdings, the UK’s largest tech company, has made a bold prediction: artificial intelligence will cure cancer within our lifetimes.
Rene Haas, CEO of the Cambridge-based chip designer, told the BBC’s Big Boss Interview podcast that modelling a cell, a human, or how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer is currently “too complex” for humans and existing computers. However, he expressed confidence that as AI models grow more sophisticated and computers become more powerful, “they’re going to solve it.”
“I believe in our lifetime, AI will help cure cancer,” Haas said. He added that AI would also lead to widespread humanoid robots in the next five to ten years, capable of performing tasks from manufacturing to cleaning and even making beds.
Addressing concerns about AI-driven job displacement, Haas downplayed the potential for mass unemployment, describing fears of widespread job losses as “a bit overstated.” He argued that new opportunities created by AI would outweigh the jobs lost.
Haas noted that AI’s rapid growth is being held back by a shortage of chips needed to build data centres. He pointed to massive “multi-gigawatt” data centres being planned in France and the US, as well as proposals to put them in space. “We are absolutely in a supply-constrained environment. Can you get enough chips? We need more fabs before we can put a data centre in space,” he said.
However, he dismissed the idea of manufacturing chips in the UK, citing the high cost and need for specialised workers and resources. He argued that the existing global ecosystem for chip manufacturing is sufficient.
Arm, which designs the brains of microchips used in billions of devices, is at the heart of the AI revolution. Its power-efficient technology is now used in half of AI data centres worldwide. The company recently began selling its own microchips, and Haas said demand for its Arm AGI chip from Meta has been “off the charts,” generating more than $2 billion in demand since its March launch.
Haas also stated that while Arm is now a Japanese-owned company, half of its employees remain in the UK, and it is “by far and away the largest employer in Cambridge.”
Professor Chris Bakal from the Institute of Cancer Research in London offered a measured view on AI’s role in medicine, noting that the real question is no longer whether we use AI, but what we feed it. His lab trains AI on data generated from patient samples, rather than scraped from the internet. “The future of medical AI will not belong to whoever builds the biggest computer. It will belong to whoever has the right measurements,” Bakal said, adding that such predictions could significantly reduce the time needed to develop new treatments.
