White House adviser Michael Kratsios gives AI for science higher priority than longevity research
White House adviser Michael Kratsios gives AI for science higher priority than longevity research
The federal Genesis Mission program is intended to connect data, computing resources and laboratories to apply AI to science; Kratsios identified the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an appropriate home for longevity research.
On October 22, in a conversation with Tyler Cowen, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios was asked whether the federal government should fund AI for longevity research to help people live to 120. He replied:
“I would not consider it a top national priority in the same category as sending a person to the Moon or broadly funding superintelligence for science. But it sounds like something that people at NIH would be interested in pursuing.”
Kratsios uses “superintelligence” for what Cowen calls AI. He said private companies are developing the next frontier models, while federal funding should help apply those models to scientific problems. He links this priority to shared infrastructure across scientific fields.
The White House calls this program Genesis Mission. It brings together supercomputers, AI models, scientific instruments and datasets at national laboratories. In this approach, a model proposes a hypothesis, an experiment tests it, and the results provide data for the next step.
The July analysis of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy report already listed helping Americans live longer, healthier lives among the goals of Genesis. In the interview, Kratsios described funding AI for science as a primary priority and longevity research as a subject for the relevant agency.
NIH stands for the National Institutes of Health, the US federal agency that conducts and supports biomedical research. Cowen said he would personally prefer to live to 120 rather than send a person to the Moon. Kratsios agreed and added that he particularly hoped NIH would find treatments for serious diseases more quickly.