Robert Wright's Nonzero Using AI to Fight Cancer (Robert Wright & Nathan Labenz)
Dec 9, 2025
Nathan Labenz, host of the Cognitive Revolution podcast and an AI entrepreneur affiliated with Waymark AI, shares his personal journey navigating his son's cancer diagnosis with the help of AI. He discusses the role of AI in identifying critical health issues and optimizing treatment plans. Topics include the balance of AI and doctor trust, utilizing multiple AI opinions for informed decisions, and AI's ability to provide expert insights across different domains. Nathan emphasizes the importance of using AI to empower patients, streamline medical consultations, and improve monitoring for better outcomes.
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Rapid Diagnosis Of A Child’s Aggressive Cancer
- Nathan Labenz recounts his son's rapid-onset Burkitt lymphoma diagnosis and the fast escalation from vague symptoms to an urgent oncology workup.
- AI flagged a suspicious blood-test red flag and pushed the family to seek urgent follow-up that narrowed the diagnosis within days.
AIs Approach Human Doctor Level Performance
- AIs are now roughly competitive with human doctors for diagnostic and treatment-recommendation queries when given full context.
- They are most useful accelerating research, cross-checking care, and planning contingency pathways.
Give AI All Patient Data You Can
- Compile every available medical record, notes, and test result and feed them to an AI to maximize diagnostic accuracy.
- Include verbatim clinic audio or photos of paper records because modern models handle large context windows well.
