“Theories are like toothbrushes,” it’s sometimes said. “Everybody has their own and nobody wants to use anybody else’s.”
It’s a joke, but when it comes to the study of consciousness – the question of how we have a subjective experience of anything at all – it’s not too far from the truth.
In 2022, British neuroscientist Anil Seth and I published a review listing 22 theories based in the biology of the brain. In 2024, operating with a less restrictive scope, US public intellectual Robert Kuhn counted more than 200.
Lately, there’s been growing pushback against the idea that AI will transform geroscience in the short term. When Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis told 60 Minutes that AI could help cure every disease within 5–10 years, many in the longevity and biotech communities scoffed. Leading aging biologists called it wishful thinking — or outright fantasy. They argue that we still lack crucial biological data to train AI models, and that experiments and clinical trials move too slowly to change the timeline.
Our guest in this episode, Professor Derya Unutmaz, knows these objections well. But he’s firmly on Team Hassabis. In fact, Unutmaz goes even further. He says we won’t just cure diseases — we’ll solve aging itself within the next 20 years.
And best of all, he offers a surprisingly detailed, concrete explanation of how it will happen: building virtual cells, modeling entire biological systems in silico, and dramatically accelerating drug discovery — powered by next-generation AI reasoning engines.
🧬 In this wide-ranging conversation, we also cover:
✅ Why biological complexity is no longer an unsolvable barrier. ✅ How digital twins could revolutionize diagnosis and treatment. ✅ Why clinical trials as we know them may soon collapse. ✅ The accelerating timeline toward longevity escape velocity. ✅ How reasoning AIs (like GPT-4o, o1, DeepSeek) are changing scientific research. ✅ Whether AI creativity challenges the idea that only biological minds can create. ✅ Why AI will force a new culture of leisure, curiosity, and human flourishing. ✅ The existential stress that will come as AI outperforms human expertise. ✅ Why “Don’t die” is no longer a joke — it’s real advice.
🎙️ Hosted — as always — by Peter Ottsjö (tech journalist and author of Evigt Ung) and Dr. Patrick Linden (philosopher and author of The Case Against Death).
Imagine this: a round, plump robot, like a giant bowling ball, that can roll on land, swim in water, and perform all sorts of high-tech operations. On October 9th, a team of scientists from Zhejiang University unveiled something called the RT-G spherical robot, claiming it’s a \.
Breaking oxygen out of a water molecule is a relatively simple process, at least chemically. Even so, it does require components, one of the most important of which is a catalyst. Catalysts enable reactions and are linearly scalable, so if you want more reactions quickly, you need a bigger catalyst. In space exploration, bigger means heavier, which translates into more expensive. So, when humanity is looking for a catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen on Mars, creating one from local Martian materials would be worthwhile. That is precisely what a team from Hefei, China, did by using what they called an “AI Chemist.”
Unfortunately, the name “AIChemist” didn’t stick, though that joke might vary depending on the font you read it in. Whatever its name, the team’s work was some serious science. It specifically applied machine learning algorithms that have become all the rage lately to selecting an effective catalyst for an “oxygen evolution reaction” by utilizing materials native to Mars.
To say it only chose the catalyst isn’t giving the system the full credit it’s due, though. It accomplished a series of steps, including developing a catalyst formula, pretreating the ore to create the catalyst, synthesizing it, and testing it once it was complete. The authors estimate that the automated process saved over 2,000 years of human labor by completing all of these tasks and point to the exceptional results of the testing to prove it.
We’ve all been there. Moments after leaving a party, your brain is suddenly filled with intrusive thoughts about what others were thinking. “Did they think I talked too much?” “Did my joke offend them?” “Were they having a good time?”
In a new Northwestern Medicine study, scientists sought to better understand how humans evolved to become so skilled at thinking about what’s happening in other peoples’ minds. The findings could have implications for one day treating psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression.
“We spend a lot of time wondering, ‘What is that person feeling, thinking? Did I say something to upset them?’” said senior author Rodrigo Braga. “The parts of the brain that allow us to do this are in regions of the human brain that have expanded recently in our evolution, and that implies that it’s a recently developed process. In essence, you’re putting yourself in someone else’s mind and making inferences about what that person is thinking when you cannot really know.”
RALEIGH, N.C. — Particle physicist Hitoshi Murayama admits that he used to worry about being known as the “most hated man” in his field of science. But the good news is that now he can joke about it.
Last year, the Berkeley professor chaired the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, or P5, which drew up a list of multimillion-dollar physics experiments that should move ahead over the next 10 years. The list focused on phenomena ranging from subatomic smash-ups to cosmic inflation. At the same time, the panel also had to decide which projects would have to be left behind for budgetary reasons, which could have turned Murayama into the Dr. No of physics.
Although Murayama has some regrets about the projects that were put off, he’s satisfied with how the process turned out. Now he’s just hoping that the federal government will follow through on the P5’s top priorities.
Even the biggest investors often make terrible trading decisions for their portfolios.
At an AI summit in Tokyo on Wednesday, Jensen Huang and Masayoshi Son joked about how SoftBank was once Nvidia’s largest shareholder before dumping its stake. The two billionaires are now joining forces on a Japanese supercomputer. SoftBank, which until early 2019 owned 4.9% of Nvidia, has secured a favorable spot in line for the chipmaker’s latest products.\r. ——–\r. More on Bloomberg Television and Markets\r. \r. Like this video? Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don’t miss any videos from Bloomberg Markets \& Finance: https://tinyurl.com/ysu5b8a9\r. Visit http://www.bloomberg.com for business news \& analysis, up-to-the-minute market data, features, profiles and more.\r. \r. Connect with Bloomberg Television on:\r. X: / bloombergtv \r. Facebook: / bloombergtelevision \r. Instagram: / bloombergtv \r. \r. Connect with Bloomberg Business on:\r. X: / business \r. Facebook: / bloombergbusiness \r. Instagram: / bloombergbusiness \r. TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bloombergbusi…\r. Reddit: / bloomberg \r. LinkedIn: / bloomberg-news \r. \r. More from Bloomberg:\r. Bloomberg Radio: / bloombergradio \r. \r. Bloomberg Surveillance: / bsurveillance \r. Bloomberg Politics: / bpolitics \r. Bloomberg Originals: / bbgoriginals \r. \r. Watch more on YouTube:\r. Bloomberg Technology: / @bloombergtechnology \r. Bloomberg Originals: / @business \r. Bloomberg Quicktake: / @bloombergquicktake \r. Bloomberg Espanol: / @bloomberg_espanol \r. Bloomberg Podcasts: / @bloombergpodcasts
If you’ve recently scrolled through Instagram, you’ve probably noticed it: users posting AI-generated images of their lives or chuckling over a brutal feed roast by ChatGPT. What started as an innocent prompt – “Ask ChatGPT to draw what your life looks like based on what it knows about you” – has gone viral, inviting friends, followers, and even ChatGPT itself to get a peek into our most personal details. It’s fun, often eerily accurate, and, yes, a little unnerving.
The trend that started it all
A while ago, Instagram’s “Add Yours” sticker spurred the popular trend “Ask ChatGPT to roast your feed in one paragraph.” What followed were thousands of users clamouring to see the AI’s take on their profiles. ChatGPT didn’t disappoint – delivering razor-sharp observations on everything from overused vacation spots to the endless brunch photos and quirky captions, blending humour with a dash of truth. The playful roasting felt oddly familiar, almost like a best friend’s inside joke.
Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or brain plasticity, is a process that involves adaptive structural and functional changes to the brain.
Founded and directed by Deborah Zelinsky, O.D., F.N.O.R.A., F.C.O.V.D.
Just as with eye-hand coordination, integration of vision and sound – eye-ear connection – must be developed. If the two senses are out of sync, a person can experience difficulties in academics, social situations and activities such as sports.
Balance between vision and hearing is necessary for a person to learn letter sounds, for example, while applying those sounds to the words they see on a page. In social situations, a person can better understand what another is saying – and meaning — by watching body language and facial expression. Autistic patients cannot discern the nuances of a joke because they simply listen. They do not connect sound and vision, because the environment around them is too confusing.
A student whose eyesight is more sensitive than his or her hearing may be easily distracted by activities and moving objects in the environment and unable to concentrate on what the teacher is saying. People whose peripheral vision is not sufficiently “tuned in” may have to turn their head before finding what is causing a certain sound.
