Jacob Trefethen
Head of Life Sciences and Curing Diseases at the OpenAI Foundation as of 2026; before that led a team of program officers at Coefficient Giving making science and technology grants. Writes about the science and medicine that could exist and does not.
Jacob Trefethen did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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AI will not on its own compress decades of medical progress into a few years, because the binding constraint is human data, clinical trials and regulation rather than intelligence.
Those are why I do not believe that AI could end disease within 10 years on its own, nor that 50-100 years of medical progress could occur 5-10 years after powerful AI due to AI progress alone
blog.jacobtrefethen.comSaid 2 Aug 2025This on korrents
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Rapid AI progress does not automatically produce rapid medical progress; without complementary investment, people still get cancer and Alzheimer's.
Rapid AI progress does not automatically mean rapid medical progress. If the point of AI progress is human flourishing, we must make other complementary investments too.
blog.jacobtrefethen.comSaid 2 Aug 2025This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
6 September
10 November 2025
2 August 2025
From one piece AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cure 3 beliefs · blog.jacobtrefethen.com
From one piece AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cure 5 beliefs · blog.jacobtrefethen.com
From one piece What does AI progress mean for medical progress? 2 beliefs · blog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Some models could be used both for good and ill, yes. Diffusion models in particular could be used by bad actors to hallucinate toxins or other harmful proteins.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
The design of the initial molecules to test is pretty magic-feeling, and is happening already – but the arrival of new drugs prescribed by your doctor will not be magical and sudden.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
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korrents.com
AI tools are already making scientists more productive and creative, and more discoveries should follow.Their words
AI tools are helping make scientists more productive and creative already, and more discoveries should follow.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
+ 7 more
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Their words
Measles is technologically “solved”, but not everyone trusts the solutions or their messengers.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Research predominance in rich countries leads to skewed knowledge and product availability.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Yet the production methods still can’t make them below $10 per gram, so they’re still not cheap enough for some “obvious” applications like preventing kids getting malaria in a rainy season.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Going all in on AI is not the highest return-on-investment strategy if you care about human flourishing, even if AI might lead to rapid scientific advances.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
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korrents.com
Not every bottleneck on medical progress is one AI can remove, and which ones will remain can be guessed at now.Their words
But I don’t think all bottlenecks on medical progress are equally AI-able in the next decade, and I don’t think all will become irrelevant.
What does AI progress mean for medical progress?blog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Rapid AI progress does not automatically mean rapid medical progress. If the point of AI progress is human flourishing, we must make other complementary investments too.
What does AI progress mean for medical progress?blog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Those are why I do not believe that AI could end disease within 10 years on its own, nor that 50-100 years of medical progress could occur 5-10 years after powerful AI due to AI progress alone
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
14 June 2025
9 June 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
How to be a wise optimist about science and technology?Their words
Nielsen reads as a scientist holding those tensions seriously, alive and vivid, while believing intellectual progress and reconciliation between them is possible.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
The Practical Guide to Biotech PartnershipsTheir words
I love detailed pieces written by people who've successfully done the thing they're writing about. The more specific the better.
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
Machines of Loving GraceTheir words
for those wondering if San Franciscans are all the same, FYI I disagree with some parts of Amodei's piece that are pretty important to his conclusions.
+ 3 more
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Lovedrcmnd.app
blog maximalismTheir words
Not to do with science writing, just writing: I love Erik Hoel's philosophy of blog maximalism, blogs embodying the good of the internet
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Sampling the 2024 blogosphere: Part 1Their words
Relatedly, I loved Hoel's Sampling the 2024 blogosphere: Part 1.
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Bio(un)ethicalTheir words
Here's a podcast from Leah Pierson and Sophie Gilbert, Bio(un)ethical, if you want to start down the rabbithole.
29 May 2025
From one piece A Quantitative Approach to Vaccine Funding 2 beliefs · blog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Infectious diseases as a category receive vastly less R&D spending from industry than non-communicable diseases, per death they cause, because they disproportionately kill people in lower- and middle-income countries where the payoff for making a cure is less lucrative.
A Quantitative Approach to Vaccine Fundingblog.jacobtrefethen.com
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Their words
Our punchline is that R&D spending varies by 10X+ across diseases for no good reason. I've been poking at that punchline for the last six or so years, from different directions, and I am confident it's true.
A Quantitative Approach to Vaccine Fundingblog.jacobtrefethen.com
1 March 2025
13 January 2025
20 September 2024
11 June 2024
3 June 2024
23 May 2024
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 14 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
AI will not on its own compress decades of medical progress into a few years, because the binding constraint is human data, clinical trials and regulation rather than intelligence.
Those are why I do not believe that AI could end disease within 10 years on its own, nor that 50-100 years of medical progress could occur 5-10 years after powerful AI due to AI progress alone
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
Rapid AI progress does not automatically produce rapid medical progress; without complementary investment, people still get cancer and Alzheimer's.
Rapid AI progress does not automatically mean rapid medical progress. If the point of AI progress is human flourishing, we must make other complementary investments too.
What does AI progress mean for medical progress? Said 2 Aug 2025
Not every bottleneck on medical progress is one AI can remove, and which ones will remain can be guessed at now.
But I don’t think all bottlenecks on medical progress are equally AI-able in the next decade, and I don’t think all will become irrelevant.
What does AI progress mean for medical progress? Said 2 Aug 2025
Show 11 more
Going all in on AI is not the highest-return strategy for human flourishing, even if AI does produce rapid scientific advances.
Going all in on AI is not the highest return-on-investment strategy if you care about human flourishing, even if AI might lead to rapid scientific advances.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
Fifty years on, monoclonal antibodies still cannot be manufactured cheaply enough to use them for obvious jobs like preventing malaria in children.
Yet the production methods still can’t make them below $10 per gram, so they’re still not cheap enough for some “obvious” applications like preventing kids getting malaria in a rainy season.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
Because research is concentrated in rich countries, both what we know and what gets made are skewed away from the diseases of poor ones.
Research predominance in rich countries leads to skewed knowledge and product availability.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
Some diseases are technologically solved and still spread, because the remaining bottleneck is trust rather than science.
Measles is technologically “solved”, but not everyone trusts the solutions or their messengers.
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
AI tools are already making scientists more productive and creative, and more discoveries should follow.
AI tools are helping make scientists more productive and creative already, and more discoveries should follow.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
Designing candidate molecules already feels like magic, but the arrival of new drugs at a doctor's prescription pad will not be sudden.
The design of the initial molecules to test is pretty magic-feeling, and is happening already – but the arrival of new drugs prescribed by your doctor will not be magical and sudden.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
The tools that make biology powerful for medicine are the same tools that make it dangerous, so the benefits and the misuse risk cannot be separated.
Some models could be used both for good and ill, yes. Diffusion models in particular could be used by bad actors to hallucinate toxins or other harmful proteins.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
R&D spending varies more than tenfold across diseases for no good reason, which is where the best opportunities in science funding are.
Our punchline is that R&D spending varies by 10X+ across diseases for no good reason. I've been poking at that punchline for the last six or so years, from different directions, and I am confident it's true.
A Quantitative Approach to Vaccine Funding Said 29 May 2025
Infectious diseases get far less industry R&D per death than non-communicable ones, because they mostly kill people in countries where a cure pays less.
Infectious diseases as a category receive vastly less R&D spending from industry than non-communicable diseases, per death they cause, because they disproportionately kill people in lower- and middle-income countries where the payoff for making a cure is less lucrative.
A Quantitative Approach to Vaccine Funding Said 29 May 2025
Technological progress does not deliver the most important technologies first; what people choose to work on decides what exists.
Technological progress is not a mystical force that delivers the most important ones first.
10 technologies that won't exist in 5 years Said 2 Feb 2024
Ten billion dollars over ten years would deliver most of a list of missing life-saving health technologies, so their absence is a funding choice rather than a scientific limit.
With an extra $10 billion over 10 years I’m pretty sure we’d get to 5 or 6 of the 10 on the list, and millions of unnecessary deaths would be prevented.
10 technologies that won't exist in 5 years Said 2 Feb 2024
Beliefs others hold too
AI will not on its own compress decades of medical progress into a few years, because the binding constraint is human data, clinical trials and regulation rather than intelligence. 2 hold this
Those are why I do not believe that AI could end disease within 10 years on its own, nor that 50-100 years of medical progress could occur 5-10 years after powerful AI due to AI progress alone
AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
The tools that make biology powerful for medicine are the same tools that make it dangerous, so the benefits and the misuse risk cannot be separated. 2 hold this
Some models could be used both for good and ill, yes. Diffusion models in particular could be used by bad actors to hallucinate toxins or other harmful proteins.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cure Said 2 Aug 2025
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 6 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends Bio(un)ethical
Here's a podcast from Leah Pierson and Sophie Gilbert, Bio(un)ethical, if you want to start down the rabbithole.
blog.jacobtrefethen.com 9 Jun 2025
Loved Sampling the 2024 blogosphere: Part 1
Relatedly, I loved Hoel's Sampling the 2024 blogosphere: Part 1.
blog.jacobtrefethen.com 9 Jun 2025
What others say about Sampling the 2024 blogosphere: Part 1 →
Loved blog maximalism
Not to do with science writing, just writing: I love Erik Hoel's philosophy of blog maximalism, blogs embodying the good of the internet
blog.jacobtrefethen.com 9 Jun 2025
Show 3 more
Mixed on Machines of Loving Grace
for those wondering if San Franciscans are all the same, FYI I disagree with some parts of Amodei's piece that are pretty important to his conclusions.
blog.jacobtrefethen.com 9 Jun 2025
Loved The Practical Guide to Biotech Partnerships
I love detailed pieces written by people who've successfully done the thing they're writing about. The more specific the better.
blog.jacobtrefethen.com 9 Jun 2025
What others say about The Practical Guide to Biotech Partnerships →
Loved How to be a wise optimist about science and technology?
Nielsen reads as a scientist holding those tensions seriously, alive and vivid, while believing intellectual progress and reconciliation between them is possible.
blog.jacobtrefethen.com 9 Jun 2025
What others say about How to be a wise optimist about science and technology? →
Where they publish
Blog Jacob Trefethen's blog His blog on global health, vaccines and research funding. Has a feed.
Recent
- Footnotes to 2.5 years 6 Sept 2026 Success for each technology was defined as “100,000 people have taken it” by February 2nd, 2029. That’s because new technologies don’t matter unless people actually use and benefit from them. The exception was row #9 –…
- Halfway to 5 years 6 Sept 2026 I started this blog in February 2024, with a post about February 2029. Reviewing at the halfway point: nine of the ten technologies I wrote about are still unavailable, and we're not close on most of them. Taking the fi…
- Hiring scientists to give away money 10 Nov 2025 At Open Philanthropy, we have given away $600 million in biomedical research since 2016. That funding has supported the work of thousands of scientists across hundreds of universities, nonprofits, and companies around t…
Show 12 more
- AI could help lead to an Alzheimer’s cure 3 Aug 2025 Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” starts with piano keys, church bells, violins soaring through the first verse. Then a drum roll, and Lana belts out: Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful? Wi…
- AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer’s cure 3 Aug 2025 I work on funding science for the sake of medical progress, but only 10% of our science funding at Open Philanthropy is related to AI. The whole premise of Open Philanthropy is we try to allocate money across causes to…
- What does AI progress mean for medical progress? 3 Aug 2025 Rapid AI progress does not automatically mean rapid medical progress. If the point of AI progress is human flourishing, we must make other complementary investments too. Even with extremely powerful AI, people will stil…
- Lenacapavir and Thom Gunn 14 Jun 2025 I assume many people working in medical research fantasise about talking to Saloni Dattani. I assume that because I did, after reading Saloni's writing and listening to her interviews. Now, I thought, there is someone w…
- Science writing from the last two years that stuck with me 10 Jun 2025 This list consists of writing that ticked two boxes: 1) did I think about the article again more than a week after reading it?, and 2) was it written for a popular audience? So, academic papers, including review papers,…
- A Quantitative Approach to Vaccine Funding 29 May 2025 It is always easiest to insult your own work, so let me tell you what's wrong with the piece Rafael Dib and I just published on vaccine R&D. Our analysis is driven by a practical question: how should Open Philanthropy s…
- Generosity 1 Mar 2025 Why should we have to pay for projects in foreign countries with our tax dollars? Well, we don't have to. It is a decision. At the moment the decision costs $15 per month each, $200 per year. The United States represent…
- The NIH and NSF 13 Jan 2025 This decade brought two inventions that will prevent a million deaths in America. One came from a German company who partnered with Pfizer to make Comirnaty available nine months into the COVID pandemic, becoming the mo…
- Effective nonprofits 20 Sept 2024 The most striking fact about philanthropy to me is how little money rich people give away. It is well known that we all die, and that leaving overwhelming wealth to your children can make their lives worse not better, s…
- FDA, ARPA-H, & CDC – policy ideas part 2 11 Jun 2024 CDC 6. Start convening ACIP Work Groups on diseases/infections that have no vaccines, many years ahead of there being particular candidates to assess. Publish the rough parameters under which ACIP would expect to recomm…
- 10 U.S. policy ideas for 10 lifesaving technologies 3 Jun 2024 Tom Kalil responded to my first blog post on 10 technologies that won’t exist in 5 years, asking: OK, how do we make them happen? Ashish Jha responded saying we as a society can decide to make new lifesaving technologie…
- No more strep throat 23 May 2024 I last got strep throat the first month out of lockdown. I had been indoors, in public, and was being punished. It was cruel and unusual to check me just when we were allowed to enter the world again. I went to my docto…
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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