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Stanford professor on the future of life-saving medicine | Steve Quake

Big Think | September 16, 2025



What if AI could tell us we have cancer before we show a single symptom? Steve Quake, head of science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, explains how AI can revolutionize science.

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AI can help us understand complex systems like our cells. better. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is committed to building one of the world’s biggest non-profit life science AI computing clusters to help build digital models of what goes wrong in cells when we get diseases like diabetes or cancer and more.

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We created this video in partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

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About Steve Quake:

Steve Quake oversees a shared, comprehensive strategy across the CZ Science program and technology teams, the CZ Biohub Network, and the Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advanced Biological Imaging.

His research is at the nexus of biology, physics, and technology development. He has invented many measurement tools for biology, including new DNA sequencing technologies that have enabled rapid analysis of the human genome, and microfluidic automation that allows scientists to efficiently isolate cells for single-cell biology.

Quake is also the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and professor of applied physics at Stanford University. He joined Stanford in 2005 to help found and lead Stanford’s then-new bioengineering department as it grew to nearly two dozen faculty members. He was an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2006 to 2016.

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Comments

This post currently has 50 comments.

  3. @ryanschulte9040

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    Hey few have mentioned corporate greed. If you believe that this will bring and end to all of your ailments that won't let u get out of your wheelchair, think again. Corporate greed and shareholders will win everytime.

  10. @fC-bb2ug

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    Machine learning and artificial intelligence are everywhere, we cannot ignore its benefits. By using machine learning algorithms, cancer cells can be classified in accordance with different variables such as cell shape, cell size and etc resulting in detection of them by a certain proportion. But there are some hurdles to determine the process that we need big computer systems and server for big data from analysis. Throughout the teaching the machine out regarding medicine implementations, overfitting is a big issue to be taken away that the machine learning model should not memorize the all datasets behave. unless otherwise , the algorithms mistakenly say "yes" to "no" resulting in failure.

  11. @sydneysymposia

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    Propaganda from Zuckerberg. The first response of any thinking person who values living in a free society to this video should be one of dystopian horror. Don't be fooled by the veneer of therapeutic optimism: the power to track, record, and program the information in the cells of your body is another frontier (now under your skin, in the very fibre of your biological being) for the expansion of the cybernetic totalitarianism being spearheaded by sociopathic multi-billionaires like Zuckerberg and Musk. These goons never use the data they harvest from their users for benevolent purposes, which is why promoting this kind of work behind the alibi of a "charitable initiative" makes it all the more sinister.

  13. @ChrisTLiuo

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    We can find a cure to cancer, but I guarantee you will spend the rest of your life trying to pay off your medical debt due to how the healthcare system works right now.

  17. @theguardian908

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    In the near future, Doctors will take your blood, and A.I. will scan your Genome and will spot exactly what is causing your ailment based on your individual genetic map. You will be told what your body needs to function properly according to your body's idividual needs. Disease treatment will be considered accordingly. Specific Medical Care delivered with 99% Accuracy. This will be possible because of the A.I. mapping.

  18. @idegteke

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    There is an irreconcilable conflict of interest between (the highly profitable) life-saving of more naturally doomed individuals and (the financial burden of) saving life as a whole. We are, allegorically speaking, trying to get more points and lives in a computer game by quasi randomly tempering with the partly understood hardware components and the utterly ungraspable BIOS – instead accepting the challenge of learning how to play better by the rules. Rules are for losers, we proclaim, and we are so insanely happy to use our newly found hacking capabilities to put that fallible little Nature in it’s place and finally show our boldly assumed intellectual supremacy.

  20. @SerenaRobin

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    It blows my mind that the third, THIRD! leading cause of death in America is due to human error in the medical field! THIS is something well within the grasp of computers put to good use to impact in a positive force for those who (sadly) are deemed eligible… a whole other topic.

  21. @prabhatkr.8383

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    Modern Science is still unable to rejuvenate dead Neurone of Optic Astophy Cord and can't cure Macular Odema or Macular Degeneration.- is anyone has a solution of the above?

  29. @Malassaf97

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    I hope AI will help us understand the pathophysiologic mechanisms of the different types of depression and anxiety
    I think these two condition are the main obstacles in humanities progression. too many works and advances has been postponed because of these two factors

  31. @statictech7

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    We have heard this for 50 years. Yet nothing has changed in medicine for decades. You are controlled by pharmaceutical companies and they have no interest in curing anything.

  42. @kaystephan2610

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    I really wonder where we will be in 50 years from now. We're quickly entering cell and dna based medicine. In 2019 Israeli researchers 3D printed a tiny heart. It was only the size of a rabbit heart BUT it was a full heart with tissue, vessels, chambers etc. The researchers said that in 15 years (which would be 2034) they want to implant the first heart 3D printed with stem cells. This technology will progress a lot in the next decades and could significantly extend human lifespan. Heart disease is the #1 leading cause of death. But if you replace your heart at, say, age 40 your heart-timer basically starts from 0. And who knows what else we might be able to do with stem cells etc. to keep the brain and the rest of the body fresh. There's also a lot of research into what causes senescense in cells. "Ageing" is simply cells in a tissue getting damaged, eventually dying off while being replaced less and less and the cells that do get replaced are of worse quality. AS a result the tissue gets worse and worse. Your skin starts to LOOK older, it is more frail, gets wrinkly etc. because it looses elasticity, thickness and it just overall becomes weaker. We already understand some mechanisms that cause cells to eventually accumulate damage due to repair mechanisms no longer working properly. Same for cell replacement mechanisms. There's also research into cancer prevention. Blue Whales should be riddled with tumors right? Because they have a gigantic body mass. Same for elephans. But…they don't. The reason? While we humans only have 1 or 2 different "anti-cancer genes", blue whales have like 20. That STILL doesn't mean blue whales are always cancer free. Even they get cancer. BUT it is a lot less common.

  49. @gravestone4840

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    The future of medicine in America is a future where the average citizen can't have access to any of this life saving technology. Meanwhile across the world people of other countries with far less disposable funds will ensure their citizens have access.

  50. @jonahansen

    September 16, 2025 at 4:56 pm

    I think this guy is making a big leap of faith. Current AI does not understand anything; it gets any "intelligence" from looking at humongous, extant data sets. It's not going to solve anything not already understood. Figuring out how an organism is produced from a genome is a long way off, with a lot of clever science in the process of figuring it out. This is more of a sales pitch…

Comments are closed.

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