Lemire says curing aging or cancer needs agency, not just large language models
lemire · x · 2026-07-25
Lemire argues that large language models by themselves will not cure biological aging or cancer.
- He says the real breakthrough in recent AI math work comes from LLMs + tools, not from “blobs of weights” alone.
- For biology, he believes you need agency: an AI that can generate many conjectures, test them quickly, and iterate at a speed humans cannot match.
- He compares this to coding: he uses AI less for raw coding ability and more for faster experimentation.
- In his view, curing cancer requires making biological experiments cheap enough to run in rapid loops.
- He acknowledges some labs are already plugging LLMs into R&D systems, but says that is still far short of “LLMs alone can solve biology.”
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