Greg Brockman, the cofounder and president of OpenAI, says artificial intelligence could produce major medical breakthroughs within the next 12 to 18 months. His vision goes far beyond better treatments, reaching toward the staggering possibility that death could eventually become a choice.

Speaking at a WSJ Tech event, Brockman acknowledged that curing diseases has become a familiar promise in the artificial intelligence field. Such predictions have circulated since the launch of ChatGPT, but Brockman argued that meaningful results are now drawing close.

“Having cures for diseases is something that’s become also a trope in this field, but I think that you’re gonna see real delivery and real significant strides and impacts on biology, health, and curing of diseases over the next 12 months, 18 months,” he said.

Brockman then pushed the forecast into more extraordinary territory. He raised the possibility that progress driven by artificial intelligence might eventually allow human beings to decide whether they want to die.

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“I think that we all suffer, that the question of even just thinking about death becoming a choice. All of this is possible,” Brockman said.

OpenAI’s Greg Brockman says "death becoming a choice" is possible, and predicts AI will make real strides on curing diseases in the next 12 to 18 months

“I think that you look at something like biology, and that’s not something that’s unique to just humans. I think that we all suffer, that the question of even just thinking about death becoming a choice. All of this is possible.” “Having cures for diseases is something that’s become also a trope in this field, but I think that you’re gonna see real delivery and real significant strides and impacts on biology, health, and curing of diseases over the next 12 months, 18 months.” “I think it’s gonna take time to really deliver on the full impacts, just by the nature of this field. But I think it’s all possible and doable, and it’s exactly the kind of thing we have these models that are solving these unsolved problems. Clearly, we need to apply it to biology and life sciences.” — Fireside Alpha (@firesidealpha) November 5, 2026

He is hardly alone in making sweeping predictions about what artificial intelligence could accomplish in medicine and human longevity. Other technology figures and futurists have offered similarly dramatic assessments, though not everyone inside the industry is buying the hype without reservations.

Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer at Palantir, said last month that some artificial intelligence researchers are so convinced the technology will cure cancer that they have started smoking. Sankar described that confidence as “kind of this mass psychosis social delusion.”

Futurist Peter Diamandis made a related prediction last year, identifying 2030 as a potential turning point for human longevity. His advice was to survive long enough to benefit from the anticipated technological advances.

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Diamandis warned people not to die “from something stupid” before those developments arrive. He has used the phrase “longevity escape velocity” to describe a convergence of technologies driven by artificial intelligence that he believes could transform how long humans live.

Bryan Johnson, the millionaire biohacker known for his extensive regimen aimed at fighting aging, has also pointed toward artificial intelligence. Johnson has said it is among the technologies that could eventually create a world in which no medical condition is automatically considered incurable.

Elon Musk has weighed in with his own view of human aging. He has argued that the body ages as a synchronized system, observing that people do not have an old left arm and a young right arm.

Musk has said human beings are “programmed to die,” while suggesting that the underlying programming could be changed. In his telling, altering that programming could allow people to live significantly longer.

Elon Musk says longevity is an extremely solvable problem because the body ages in sync, nobody has an old left arm and a young right arm, so you are programmed to die and can change the program

“This is something, by the way, that I think, it’s very obviously other people think this too, but I’ve long thought that longevity or semi-immortality is an extremely solvable problem. I don’t think it’s a particularly hard problem. I mean, when you consider the fact that your body is extremely synchronized in its age, the clock must be incredibly obvious. Nobody has an old left arm and a young right arm. Why is that? What’s keeping them all in sync? You’re programmed to die, is the way, you’re programmed to die. And so if you change the program, you will live longer.” — Fireside Alpha (@firesidealpha) November 1, 2026

The grand predictions are arriving alongside examples of artificial intelligence tackling complicated technical and scientific work. The cofounder of CentOS recently built a Linux compatible kernel in only 11 days, with artificial intelligence performing most of the coding.

An artificial intelligence developed drug also appeared in a clinical trial to make patients biologically younger. Separately, Anthropic’s Claude model attempted to solve the Riemann hypothesis and failed to crack the longstanding problem, but it produced an unexpected new finding during the effort.

These examples help explain the industry’s growing confidence, but they do not erase the risks surrounding the technology. Artificial intelligence companies continue issuing enormous pronouncements about the future while also seeking government regulation of their own industry.

Artificial intelligence offers opportunities for major advances, yet it also presents landmines capable of damaging humanity. That uncomfortable combination makes the fight over who controls the technology every bit as important as the race to expand its power.

Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall addresses that conflict in his New York Times bestseller, Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI. The book is presented as a guide for developing MAGA positions on artificial intelligence that benefit humanity.

Hall’s focus is preventing control of the nation from being handed to leftists in Silicon Valley while also blocking China from dominating the global artificial intelligence race. Brockman’s death defying forecast is another reminder that the promises are enormous, and so are the stakes surrounding who directs the technology.

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