A rising senior at Charlotte Country Day School, 16-year old Santiago Alzate competed in the 2024 USA Swimming Olympic Trials. The meet serves as the National Championships in swimming for the United States, and the singular qualifier for swimming at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

During a subsequent meet, Alzate’s mother experienced a headache during the excitement, and as a precaution sought a local Urgent Care. While the attending physician had diagnosed and was treating her for a garden-variety migraine, Celin was simultaneously googling not only her symptoms which an AI Overview repetitively generated an algorithm called—Aneurysm.

However, not until Celin brought the AI Overview to the attending physicians’ attention did he direct her to an Emergency Room. Within the hour, she’d been transferred to Hoag Hospital in Orange County and diagnosed with a ruptured brain aneurysm, a life-threatening medical emergency that occurs when a blood vessel in the brain has burst and bleeds into the surrounding tissue. Emergency brain surgery ensued followed by several weeks in the ICU.

That she recovered, remarkably, with relatively few side effects, dovetailed with the announcement of the winners for Nobel Prize in Physics 2024. Called the Godfathers of AI, it can fairly be said that physics pioneers’ John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton’s discovery of the Artificial Neural Network or ANN were her first responders.

For proffering “a unique learning ability that will surpass every species on the planet,” Celin, with a new lease on life, bears witness to this very contradiction. Her son has since received an invitation to swim with the Florida Gators; to improve upon his personal best in the 400 Meter IM; and to make the exquisitely human bid to go “Faster, Higher, Stronger” at the LA28 Summer Games.