Eric Topol is a prominent cardiologist known for his research into deploying AI and other technologies to improve healthcare. He considers himself a Demis Hassabis superfan, and when I spoke to him, he enthusiastically recounted scoring a blurb from the Google DeepMind chair for “Super Agers,” Topol’s bestselling 2025 book on longevity. “He’s a hero of mine,” said Topol.

But last week, Topol publicly called out Hassabis—along with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. On X, he criticized Hassabis’ claim in a “60 Minutes” interview that AI will be capable of curing all diseases within the next decade and took Amodei to task for a similar remark.

“Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, heart disease—we don’t have cures for any of those common diseases. To think that in the next five or 10 years new drugs are going to change everything, there’s no precedent for that,” Topol told me. “It’s unrealistic and it sets the expectations for AI too high. It’s hype.”

Topol is not alone in his pushback. Over the past year, I have been taken aback by the steadily mounting drumbeat of social media posts, podcast interviews and blogs where scientists offer staunch criticism of what AI leaders say, which they regard as dangerous hubris. It’s a favorite topic during gossipy side conversations that take place at academic conferences. And in one widely shared blog post, Stanford computer scientist Daphne Koller likened the narrative around AI’s use in science to a belief that magic wands actually exist.