[keithwhor]

This is incredible.

IMO, saving one life justifies every cent invested into OpenAI. How many thousands (or many, many more) will we never know about?

This is a huge differentiator from Google, where doctors sigh and act aggressively skeptical when you do your own research.

[pavel_lishin]

> IMO, saving one life justifies every cent invested into OpenAI. How many thousands (or many, many more) will we never know about?

What if every cent spent on OpenAI, spent elsewhere, had saved two lives?

[homebrewer]

How many lives are destroyed in the process by building more coal power stations? How many will be in the future by accelerating global warming?

[MangoCoffee]

>building more coal power stations

That doesn't seem to be the case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjJtyRjiOI

[jp191919]

China is building the most new coal power, by a large margin. They love coal.

[Hasu]

You can save one life for a lot cheaper than the countless billions poured into OpenAI. This might be the least efficient life-saving intervention in history, and that's before calculating for harm caused.

[Gerardo1]

It costs UNICEF about $4 for a single malaria vaccine[1].

"Globally in 2023, there were an estimated 263 million malaria cases and 597 000 malaria deaths in 83 countries." [2]

" In the 20th century alone, malaria claimed between 150 million and 300 million lives, accounting for 2 to 5 percent of all deaths" [3]

There's a widely claimed factoid that Malaria has killed half of all people ever born, and while that might be true, there's plenty of debate you can find about how accurate that claim is. In any case, Malaria is one of, if not the, most deadly infectious disease in human history.

We could have wide-spread elimination of malaria transmission now. We could eradicate malaria with further developments. [4]

> IMO, saving one life justifies every cent invested into OpenAI.

Common reporting says openAI spent $5b last year. That's 1.25b vaccines. The population of Africa is 1.5b, and Africa has the most malaria cases of any continent. So you could make a really, really big impact in that 263m cases/597k deaths per year just by investing in something that already exists.

[1] https://www.unicef.org/supply/media/19346/file/Malaria-vacci... [2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK215638/ [4] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria

[tim333]

>We could have wide-spread elimination of malaria transmission now.

The vaccine doesn't work that well. As your article [4] says

>The highest impact will be achieved, however, when the vaccines are introduced alongside a mix of other WHO-recommended malaria interventions such as bed nets and chemoprophylaxis.

[Gerardo1]

> The vaccine doesn't work that well. As your article [4] says

It does not say that.

And in any case, as we should all very well know by now, vaccines don't have to be 100% effective at disease prevention to be effective at disease spread reduction, especially at scale.

But, lets grant the point: Fine. Use some of that $5b annual spend to fund other preventatives.

[tim333]

Oops bad punctuation - I should have had a colon. The text after the > is cut and paste from the article. From wikipedia "fourth dose extends the protection for another 1–2 years. The vaccine reduces hospital admissions from severe malaria by around 30%" So it's a helps a bit situation rather than just vaccinate everyone and malaria is over.

[FeepingCreature]

Note that the marginal malaria vaccine does not save a life. Though there's of course nonlinear benefits from eradicating the disease permanently.

[Gerardo1]

> The vaccine has been shown to significantly reduce malaria, and deadly severe malaria, among young children.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria

> Current malaria vaccines reduce uncomplicated malaria by ~40%, severe malaria by ~30%, and all-cause mortality by 13%.

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/php/public-health-strategy/malar...

[FeepingCreature]

Sorry, I expressed myself wrong. I meant "Note that you cannot assume that one dose of vaccine = one life saved".

[aredox]

You want to save more than one life?

Tax the rich.

[realslimjd]

I think doctors who are skeptical of a patient's Google research would also be skeptical about a patient's ChatGPT research.

[lm28469]

I wouldn't be so quick at disregarding negative outcomes, side effects, &c.

[aredox]

Something something survivorship bias.

[mupuff1234]

> saving one life justifies every cent invested into OpenAI

That's a really inefficient health care system.