The chief executive of the UK’s biggest tech company has said that advances in artificial intelligence will deliver a cure for cancer within the next few decades.
Rene Haas, who heads Arm Holdings, one of the world’s leading chip designers, claimed that AI would be able to solve the problem of modelling DNA markers impacted by cancer, which is currently “too complex” for humans or current AI systems.
Headquartered in Cambridge, Arm designs the semiconductor architecture that is used in billions of smartphones, smartwatches and other devices across the globe – and an increasing share of AI chips used in data centres.
The company has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global AI boom, becoming the most valuable UK firm in history earlier this year with a market cap above $400 billion.
“AI is going to... find a cure for cancer that today you and I, other humans [could] not in our lifetimes. I believe in our lifetime, AI will help cure cancer,” Mr Haas told the BBC.
“Modelling a cell, modelling a human, modelling how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer – it's too complex a problem, not only for humans today, but the computers that run AI.
“However, going forward, as we feed more and more of the models into these computers, and the computers get more sophisticated to run the models, they're going to solve it.”
Recent AI breakthroughs in healthcare have fueled optimism about the technology’s potential to accelerate medical research.
In 2024, Google DeepMind unveiled AlphaFold 3, an AI model capable of predicting how proteins, DNA, RNA and drug molecules interact.
This long-standing challenge in biology was seen as a key milestone towards discovering and developing drugs for life-changing treatments for patients.
Earlier this year, DeepMind spin-off Isomorphic Labs began preparing the first human clinical trials of drugs designed with its AI systems.
Other pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Sanofi have also made multi-billion-dollar partnerships to use AI to identify new cancer treatments.
Mr Haas said one of the key challenges to achieving this potential will be the availability of AI chips, which are currently facing supply chain issues.
"We are absolutely in a supply-constrained environment,” he said.
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