Newshot Moments after I posted my essay on why I couldn’t touch Anthropic’s IPO with a ten-foot pole, Anthropic’s CEO gave me (and everyone else) a reason to run away as fast as possible: a video tied to the IPO launch in which he made a bunch of overpromise about medicine that would have made Elizabeth Holmes blush.
As I have discussed before, this is not going to happen on anything remotely like that timeline. Cancer is more than one thing, and it will take more than a decade to eradicate it; the bit about curing mental illness (and some other things) that quickly is absolute fantasy.
The response from experts on X has been swift, and absolutely (and appropriately) brutal.
I was hardly the only one to get serious Elizabeth Holmes vibes. Here are four of my favorites:
The fact is, the field is in no position to do what Dario says, on anything like the timeline that he discusses.
On the one hand, we don’t have the data:
What Dario said about timelines just ain’t happening.
As several researchers noted, we simply can’t expedite clinical trials — which are absolutely necessary — to the degree that would be required:
Practically anyone who works in the field knows what Dario said is bullshit.
Some of the pushback even came from prominent medical researchers who I would characterize as pretty pro AI..
Here’s the Chairman annd CEO of Eli Lilly, Dave Ricks, critiquing Dario and giving a far more realistic view:
And here’s a professor of philosophy, stepping back to the larger context:
Letting this stuff slide is a mistake.
The other part of the context, of course, is the IPO:
Despite the widespread ridicule of Dario’s Elizabeth-Holmesian claims, I have not noticed a single article deconstructing them in the major media.
In failing to call Dario out on his latest, immediately pre-IPO bullshit — which is so egregious it should be investigated for securities fraud — the media is failing the American public.
P.S. You might need a tiny bit of technical background in software development to follow the below, but Dilbert couldn’t have captured the situation better:
