The most exciting near-term AI applications are in previously inference-bottlenecked fields like rare disease research and crowdsourced solutions for urban/rural quality of life improvements.
When asked what excites him most, Alex Atallah highlights two areas: using AI to tackle rare disease research (previously limited by inference compute) and crowdsourcing ideas for tangible improvements to urban and rural life, leveraging global 'brilliant ideas' that were previously unfeasible. ✦ AI generated
Alex Atallah · 20VC · 2026-08-10 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 66:37
“Final one, when you look at the landscape today, there are so many things to be excited about. What do you singularly most excited about?”
One is rare disease research, which I think is one of those things that has been intelligence bottleneck or really just the inference bottleneck. Like it involves like trying out lots of ideas and seeing if they work. Um the other is crowdsourcing productive urban life improvements... like imagine if somebody had like if someone was curious about finding every lead pipe in America or every lead pipe in the UK... now you can use AI to do that... I'm excited about sort of very like broad kind of urban um like or urban or or rural like quality of life improvements that we'll be able to make.
verbatim transcript · starts at 66:37
66:37things to be excited about. What do you singularly most excited about? >> One is rare disease research, which I think is one of those things that has been intelligence bottleneck or really just the inference bottleneck. Like it involves like trying out lots of ideas and seeing if they work. Um the other is crowdsourcing productive urban life improvements. So for example, like imagine if somebody had like if someone was curious about finding
67:13every lead pipe in America or every lead pipe in the UK and like had a an approach to it, but they really need like to make it mature um and and stress test it. Like now you can use AI to do that and we just might solve some weird problems that everyone's just kind of given up on because like you you need like a crazy idea to
67:40come from somewhere. Like brilliant ideas are sort of evenly distributed all over the world. Like they they they can come from anywhere. Um and now you just give them leverage to actually work. So, I'm excited about sort of very like broad kind of urban um like or urban or or rural like quality of life improvements that we'll be able to make. >> All right, dude. I've wanted to do this
68:04one for a while. I'm so glad we could do it in person as well. I was worried that we were going to have to do it remote. It is so much nicer to do it in person. You've been fantastic. So, thank you so much for doing it with me. >> Likewise. This was great.