The author argues that intelligence and AI advancements are not the primary barriers to progress in fields like medicine and housing. Instead, regulatory and governance challenges dominate. At a dinner, an AI lab representative expressed pity, believing AGI would solve complex problems. The author countered with examples: housing costs remain high despite technological solutions due to political will, and medical breakthroughs are stalled by clinical trials costing over $1 billion per drug.

In medicine, biopharma innovation faces bottlenecks unrelated to intelligence. Eroom’s Law shows declining drug approvals per R&D dollar despite scientific advances. Companies like Adaptimmune struggle with high manufacturing costs and regulatory demands. Surrogate endpoints could shorten trials by 10x, but accessing data from agencies like the NIH or FDA is slow—validating Bone Mineral Density (BMD) as a surrogate took 12 years.

The author emphasizes that governance, not just technical capability, stifles progress. Even with AI’s persuasive power, real-world change depends on political will and systemic reforms. The narrative that AI will ‘cure’ diseases overlooks these entrenched structural issues.