AI helped paralyzed people walk and boosted cancer detection 29% — researcher calls for public 2040 optimism guide
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-09-17
Afinetheorem argues AI safety concerns are real but the public is wildly underrating actual progress, calling for a public "guide" to median researcher expectations of optimistic 2040 outcomes across medicine, construction, government, and more.
Quoting Nina Schick, the thread catalogs concrete medical and learning wins:
- Medicine: brain implants restoring speech (and patients' own voices) for paralyzed people; a brain–spine interface letting a paralyzed man stand and walk by thinking; phone-camera AI helping blind people navigate and read; a 29% boost in breast cancer detection in a major study; AI-discovered antibiotic candidate Abaucin killing drug-resistant superbugs in lab and animal tests.
- Learning: personalized tutoring advances (truncated in the original).
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