# AI could expand scarce expertise for rare diseases

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-could-expand-scarce-expertise-for-rare-diseases/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Amanda Askell](https://realalpha.app/builders/amanda-askell/) · Amanda Askell is an AI safety researcher at Anthropic. · Leads Anthropic's personality alignment team, shaping Claude's character; co-authored the GPT-3 paper at OpenAI.
- Host: Eric Newcomer · Newcomer
- Show: Newcomer Pod
- Episode: [Amanda Askell on AI Consciousness, Claude & Silicon Valley’s Biggest Fear](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/), Apr 20, 2026
- Moment: 31:55 to 35:31 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-could-expand-scarce-expertise-for-rare-diseases/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=1915

## Quote

> “You have like **200,000 of the world's best experts**. And I'm like, if you're a person who has that form of cancer, that's like, you know, so wildly beneficial.”
> — [Amanda Askell](https://realalpha.app/builders/amanda-askell/) at [34:36](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=2076) · Newcomer Pod

## Takeaways

1. She contrasts a 200-person team with 200,000 AI experts.
2. More research capacity could help people with rare diseases.
3. Her optimism centers on solving problems that lack resources.

## About this segment

Amanda Askell's optimistic case is that AI could put far more expert minds to work on problems like rare cancers. She sees that expanded capacity as a path to tackling problems that lack enough human researchers.

From “Amanda Askell on AI Consciousness, Claude & Silicon Valley’s Biggest Fear”, Apr 20, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/)

## Transcript

From the transcript Newcomer Pod publishes with the episode.

[31:59](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=1919) Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I live in maybe this is the too much. You live in San Francisco and so you have the like the tech optimist part of your brain, at least that is like if things go well and you can imagine, you know, so imagine we have like AI models, they kind of have inherited like the best of us and genuinely like care for humanity, care for like the world, like, you know, our and are highly intelligent, highly capable, like the that would be, you know, so it's almost like adding like a huge amount of like extremely smart people to like every problems.

[32:41](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=1961) Suddenly we're all working together, but there's like way more of us and some of us are just extremely smart. Namely all of these like AI models. I've thought before about how many large scale social problems actually had technological solutions and it's almost like people don't love to be like techno optimists anymore because we've also seen like the downsides of technology at the same time, I don't know why I sometimes think about like syphilis. It was this huge social problem.

[33:07](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=1987) Like I just did a deep dive once into all of the attempts by like governments to like work to reduce syphilis in the army because it's creating issues with the armed forces, All of these social programs that were like stigmatizing. And it was really this like, and then suddenly we just like, got drugs that treated this like this devastating illness. And I don't know, it's like overnight a lot of that need just like kind of disappear. Well, drugs, yeah.

[33:33](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=2013) I mean, it's the the things that the tech industry has been good at producing. You can see how this helps. It's like build a new thing we can ingest like a thing we can wear the the stuff that's like you should govern your society. Like this is a little scarier. I mean, I, I sort of do think like that if you had sort of a sort of normal person using Claude and dictating like American policy, you'd probably like have a better outcome than someone like the democratic systems we have today. I mean, I don't know that's it's provocative, but I guess how much do you think like we'll be using these models to run government?

[34:13](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=2053) Well, that's a good question. Like I guess like I should say like. He's the syphilis thing is like a social you have to like set policy. Oh. I mean, I think the thing I was actually thinking is like, if you can just, you know, like so many, we have so many problems that I'm like, you know, health. Like I'm like, if you could imagine like AI instead of it just being like, you have a small team of like 200 people working on a rare cancer. You have like 200,000 of the world's best experts. And I'm like, if you're a person who has that form of cancer, that's like, you know, so wildly beneficial. And so I guess like, my thought is, you know, the optimistic side of me is like, imagine taking all of these problems that just like we lack the resources to fully like really try and fix and suddenly having

[35:00](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=2100) models that can like work on them. So just like actual in the same way of like developing drugs for a thing. So maybe that's the thing that makes me excited is like having like many more minds working on the world's biggest problems. And maybe also like the economy. It would be good if it was like booming and it was like shared such that like we reduced poverty, like all of that. Like that's the kind of like the dream outcome.

[35:23](https://realalpha.app/v/0GaKJ4Fp2x4/?t=2123) I think that does require like maintaining, you know, I again, in the areas that I don't feel like an expert in, this is one