‘Promise of the future’: Oracle’s Larry Ellison says AI can make cancer vaccine available in 48 hrs

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said that artificial intelligence (AI) can detect cancer, help develop a vaccine as well as in 48 hours make that vaccine available for every individual person. Ellison said this at a gathering in the White House, which also involved SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“Little fragments of those tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do it using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test. Once we gene sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person – design a vaccine for every individual person that vaccinates them against that cancer. That mRNA vaccine, you can make that robotically, again using AI, in about 48 hours,” said Ellison. 

“So imagine, early cancer detection, the development of a cancer vaccine for your particular cancer aimed at you and having that vaccine available for you in 48 hours -- this is the promise of AI and the promise of the future,” said Ellison. 

OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate that will build data centres and create more than 100,000 jobs in the US. These companies along with other equity backers of Stargate have committed $100 billion investment over the next four years.

Ellison said that the first of the project’s data centres are already under construction in Texas. Twenty will be built, half a million square feet each, he said. The project could power AI that analyses electronic health records and helps doctors care for their patients, Ellison said.