Thank you so much for that very kind introduction and thank you for inviting me to be with you. I'm absolutely honored to be a part of this very important conversation about how together we can make a difference for all Americans.
That was an extraordinary conversation. I think what really resonated with me when we were talking about reigniting the American dream is that is core to Google's values and very much a part of my family's history. So, I'm going to take a couple of minutes just to quickly go through a bit of the conversation about my family's journey to America and then we'll highlight why I'm optimistic, why I think all of us can be optimistic about the opportunity with technology, specifically with AI to help deliver importantly for everyone everywhere across the country.
Now, before I go into that, as with any technology, there are downsides, risks, and they need to be addressed and most notably concerns about energy affordability, concerns about jobs, and we can get into that in the conversation. At the same time, I think it's equally important that people in every corner of each of your states feel the benefit to them in their lived experience. They have to see firsthand why this is worth pursuing. Why it's not some abstract concept about geopolitics but in their gut makes a difference for their children, for themselves, for their families, their friends. And my lived experience is why I am optimistic about technology.
My father often said that our family's journey to America should not have been possible. He was a Holocaust refugee. His father was taken by the Gestapo on Kristallnacht and that drove him to find a way out of Europe. As a teenager, he was in that age group that enabled him to escape on a youth boat, but the remainder of his family was trapped in Vienna and they were murdered in the camps. My father enlisted in the British Army. He fought in the two battles of El Alamein. He was part of the liberation of Italy and he never had a chance to finish high school. But while fighting he began to teach himself engineering and physics and Governor Stitt has already told you why he viewed education as his passport to freedom and it was and that's something he told us constantly. He went on to earn a master's and a PhD in physics and engineering at the University of Manchester in England, which is where I was born. And that eventually got us to the United States and it got him to a career at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center where he helped design the Atom Smasher.
So, as a result, I mostly grew up in Silicon Valley. Not to date myself, but it was a time when the art of the possible was rapidly expanding, best articulated by the now famous Moore's Law that the exponential growth of computing power allows human creativity to operate on a scale never to that point imaginable. And in many respects, I think that's exactly what we're living through right now with AI. One data point that underscores what an asset technology has been for our country is that 85% of economic growth over the last 80 years is attributable to technology. But data are also telling us some very troubling things which all of you are very familiar with and we need to address them if we're going to collectively reignite the American dream. 54% of Americans read at or below the sixth grade level. 35% of Americans report they are unable to get health care. In 2003, a terrifying stat, America led China in 60 of 64 advanced technologies. By 2023, China led in 57 of 64.
So to address those gaps and create more pathways for Americans, I believe there is a role of AI not as a panacea but as a partner and it is already at work today albeit its very early days but you can see it in education, in health care, you can see it in crisis alerts, in government services, in supporting businesses. So I'm just going to narrow in on one in the interest of time and talk about the application of AI to health care because I think it's relevant and personal to all of us and I'm going to share a mental model about why we should be optimistic that then applies to all of the other categories and happy to come back to them. And in particular, I'm going to focus on one disease, cancer. And the reason is the unfortunate reality is 40% of us in this room will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime. And I was one of them twice. And yet today, I can stand here and say there is a reason to be optimistic about the path forward with cancer. In fact, we believe that cancer will be cured in our lifetime. And I say that because some cancers will be eradicated, assisted with AI, and others will become more manageable through early detection and better care. And I will tell you, as some of you have probably experienced, when you have cancer, just hearing the word manageable is a gift. I learned to love that word.
Extraordinary outcomes are becoming ordinary as a result of AI in three ways. And that becomes the mental model. First is advancing innovation. The art of the possible has changed in the context of health. What that specifically means is accelerating drug discovery. And I'm proud to work with two Nobel Prize winners who are at the forefront of this. One from Little Rock, Arkansas. The second is around better early detection. And again, with disease, as in so many areas, early detection makes all the difference. In cancer, early detection means the better chance of survival or a relatively easier course of treatment. And the third very important part of this mental model is enhancing operational effectiveness. What we are seeing for doctors and nurses, as with all professions, there's a chunk of their time, we have estimated around 30% from our studies that is drawn away by administrative drudgery. If we can free them from administrative drudgery with AI, they can do what they want and what we want, which is to focus on the patient.
Now, there are two really important parts to this mental model. Number one, those outcomes, better care, better delivery, better chance at a life are now available in places where today the odds of survival differ just because of your zip code. The disparity between those who live near major hospitals, major cities versus the heartland of America across so many communities that you all are leading so well doesn't make sense in 2026 and it can be addressed. The second is that this model, the art of the possible, has changed in every area that I quickly ticked through that Governor Stitt mentioned. In education, AI can alert teachers early when a student is going off track. It gives them time back to actually work with students. Disaster preparedness. Google has built models which help predict the course of flooding and fires and other natural disasters which means in many instances we can give citizens valuable time not days, not hours or minutes, but days which can give them the time they need to get out of harm's way. And then for economic growth there's an estimated $4 trillion upside to GDP in the United States if AI is deployed across sectors. That's by 2030. And in particular, I find it very exciting to see what's happening with small businesses. They're at the forefront of AI because they're seeing it gives them scale that is driving higher revenue growth, higher profitability, and we have stories in every one of your states about how small businesses are seeing this make a difference to them. Celebrating those successes, I think, is really exciting.
So, in conclusion, back to my family's journey to America. My father passed away this month, seven years ago. He was 96 years old. And in his final hours, he told me, my sister, my brother, that the best risk he ever took was coming to America. He was welcomed here. He was afforded opportunities that he thought were completely unattainable. And he was therefore able to give his children and his grandchildren a life that he thought was just a dream. I've often reflected on the fact that when he was a young boy in Vienna, his dream was actually to build bridges. And although he never got to do that as a result of the war, he never built those physical bridges, he was able to build other bridges, including a better life for a family. And I think all of us have this extraordinary opportunity today and therefore a responsibility to actually be bridge builders. And I'm deeply, deeply grateful to all of you for being on the front line leading the way you do to rebuild the bridge between the American dream as envisioned and the American dream as many people are actually experiencing it today. So with that I just want to thank you. I want to invite Governor Stitt back up to the stage here so that we can have a conversation. I look forward to going wherever you all want to go. Thank you.
