Following his three-decade stint in Silicon Valley, Reid Hoffman has turned to healthcare. His startup, Manas AI, aims to fast-track drug discovery with an AI engine for various cancers.

Hoffman believes that frontier AI models should be a cornerstone of healthcare, arguing that even though these models are not specifically trained for medicine, they have ingested trillions of words and can offer valuable second opinions. However, his views will likely rattle many doctors who fear outsourcing critical thinking capabilities to AI.

With the UK’s NHS facing challenges such as extensive waiting lists and a chronic shortage of family doctors, Hoffman envisions a large language model acting as a free medical assistant on every smartphone. He suggests it could also serve as early triage for appointments with human doctors.

The potential of AI discovery engines extends beyond cancer to include the identification of drug candidates for rare diseases that have traditionally been economically unviable for pharmaceutical companies to research.