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Deploying AI to sift through massive biological datasets to identify patterns humans may not see is helping spread medical solutions more widely and at lower cost.

Underhyped story of the decade: AI collides with biotechnology and genetics, ushering in a new age: the ability for humanity to manipulate the molecular architecture of life itself. That was the central message in recent conversations I had with Jamie Metzl, an AI and biotech expert and author of Hacking Darwin, Superconvergence, and the forthcoming book, The AI Ten Commandments.

Consider what is happening in medicine. Biology is rapidly becoming a data science. Genomes are being sequenced and stored digitally. Diseases are now understood as molecular pathways that can be modeled by computers. AI systems can sift enormous biological datasets to identify patterns humans can’t see. Once life becomes data, the speed of software takes over. Technologies that are digitized—whether semiconductors, data networks, AI or genomic information—tend to compound rapidly.

But Metzl says most forecasts underestimate how freakishly fast AI is improving. Recent research from METR–Model Evaluation & Threat Research, a nonprofit that assesses the safety of cutting-edge AI–suggests AI models are doubling their ability to do complex tasks every three to four months.

Expertise is spreading faster than ever. Metzl points to a physician in India who told him that 20 years ago, complicated cancer cases were routinely sent to the U.S. or Europe. Today, many of those cases are treated locally. Doctors have access to the same research literature, diagnostic technologies, and global networks of specialists.

AI and biology are beneficially reinforcing, says Metzl. AI accelerates biology by making sense of vast datasets. Biology, in turn, provides new frontiers for AI to model and manipulate. Biotechnology operationalizes both, turning insights into therapies. Each advance lowers cost and raises the speed of the next. The result is a compounding cycle of innovation—one that looks less like linear progress and more like a flywheel spinning ever faster, says Metzl.

The implications are already visible in medicine. The old model—treating diseases based on population averages—is giving way to precision care designed around a patient’s genetic profile. Diseases once considered incurable, from certain cancers to inherited disorders, are increasingly treatable at their biological root.

What follows is a redefinition of healthcare. The goal shifts from managing illness to preventing it, and ultimately to enhancing quality of life. Longevity research, once fringe, is becoming mainstream. The line between therapy and enhancement begins to blur.

For investors and policymakers, this suggests a shift as significant as the rise of software. The last era was defined by code that transformed information. The next may be defined by code that transforms life.

Metzl has seen healthcare’s future firsthand. When his father was diagnosed with metastatic neuroendocrine cancer, Metzl dove into the science of the disease and helped guide treatment decisions. The crucial first step was identifying the genetic mutation driving his cancer and selecting a therapy designed for another disease but one that targeted his mutation. It was unorthodox, but it worked. Metzl’s father survived his fatal prognosis by three years.

That experience reinforced Metzl’s belief that patients and families must play a more active role in navigating modern healthcare. Medicine is becoming too complex—and too personalized—to rely on one-size-fits-all protocols. Digital revolutions, he notes, are often consumer driven. Think personal computers, smart phones and social media. Healthcare will be next, he says.

While that creates opportunities, it also raises profound ethical and political questions. Technologies like gene editing and synthetic biology offer enormous benefits, but they also carry risks that societies are only beginning to confront.

“Smart governance of AI and biotech will be a national competitive advantage,” predicts Metzl.

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