Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla firmly believes the world is moving steadily towards a future wherein artificial intelligence will take over a large chunk of the tasks doctors perform. He says that machines can easily handle the technical aspect of health care, and human doctors need to focus on those aspects of care that require empathy, trust, and complex judgment.
In a recent thread in X, Khosla, an Indian-born American venture capitalist and Sun Microsystems cofounder, offered his two cents, revisiting several projections that he has made in the past decade and highlighting the recent developments that indicate those ideas are slowly edging toward reality. “For years I’ve shared predictions about how technology would reshape our world. We’re still early in that journey, but we’re getting closer every year,” he said. Here’s a look back at some of my predictions and the recent progress moving toward them.”
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AI and the future of healthcare
One of Khosla's most discussed predictions relates to medicine. He remembered that “In 2012, I predicted machines will replace ~80% of what doctors do, leaving humans to do the human element of care.” Khosla then said that data science and software improvements could change healthcare more quickly than biology can. He said that AI systems could take over diagnosis, monitoring, and major medical decision-making to free doctors to be in communicative relationships with their patients.
Early bets on artificial intelligence
Khosla also talked about his experience in OpenAI. According to him, in 2018, he foresaw that AI was going to revolutionise society’s framework. At around the same time, his company invested in OpenAI as it was the first venture capital firm to invest in OpenAI.
Referring to the explosive growth of the likes of ChatGPT, Khosla observed that it’s taken a relatively short amount of time for AI tools to achieve a level of global adoption that would typically take decades. The ability of these systems to scale is quite remarkable.
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A billion programmers and beyond
Another prediction Khosla made is the democratisation of programming. "Almost two years ago, I predicted there would be a billion+ programmers, ‘coding’ in natural language," he said. Besides AI, the list continues with breakthroughs in clean energy in the form of fusion power and super-hot geothermal energy, supersonic aircraft moving at Mach 5 speeds, and AI tutors for children.
Addressing the question of innovation strategy, Khosla encouraged entrepreneurs to think differently from the experts. “Ignore the experts and invent the future you want,” he stated.
