When vets ran out of options for his dog Rosie’s aggressive cancer, Australian tech entrepreneur Paul Conyngham turned to AI. ChatGPT pointed him toward immunotherapy and a university genomics centre, and DeepMind’s AlphaFold helped model the tumour’s proteins to design a personalised mRNA vaccine. Within a month, Rosie’s tennis-ball-sized tumour had shrunk by about 75% — and OpenAI’s Sam Altman flew out to meet him.
Doctors rightly urge caution: it is one dog, not a proven treatment. But the signal is hard to miss — consumer AI tools are letting a motivated individual attempt work that used to sit behind labs and institutions. The barrier to having a serious go at a hard problem is dropping fast, in fields far from anyone’s job title.
So…:
What hard problem might your customers — or you — now attempt with AI that was off-limits before?
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