Preliminary work suggests that T-cells, which normally target disease, can be genetically engineered to target senescent cells in a wide range of tissues. In future, an infusion of GM blood every few years might be able to keep you going indefinitely (assuming some major advances in treating cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease). At which point, the question might be less: “How long have I got?” and more: “How long do you fancy sticking around?”
American scientists have coined the term ‘senolytics’ to describe a new class of drugs designed to delay the ageing process by clearing out doddery cells.
A lot of transhumanism friends have asked me to write about Bernie Sanders, so here are my thoughts:
The transhumanism movement has been dramatically growing in size—and most of that growth is from millennials and youth joining. Transhumanists want to use science and technology to radically improve the human race, and the onslaught of new gear and gadgets to do that—like virtual reality, robots, and chip implants —are giving them plenty of ammunition to do that.
But what has caught many people off guard—including myself who probably best fits into the category: left-leaning Libertarian—is the amount of support transhumanists are giving to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Historically, transhumanism (and its de facto home: Silicon Valley) has been Libertarian-minded —with a hands-off attitude towards the government, religion, and basically any authority trying to tell them what to do or how to innovate. But with the demographics of the transhumanism movement sharply changing from older academics and technologists to young people—especially those in college—the push towards more leftist and progressive-leaning ideas is strong. For many young transhumanists, they believe they have found an ideal in Sanders.
While I like the charisma of Sanders and his long standing devotion to the people—and that is enough for me to say he’d be a good president for change—the reality is capitalism is still a hallmark of the American way. For the next four and maybe even eight years, capitalism won’t be going anywhere. Afterward, though, within 10–25 years, when robots, software, and AI really start dismantling capitalism as we know it (see my latest TechCrunch article and thoughts on a Universal Basic Income), it will be a totally different story.
Like it or not, millennials and youth obsess over this type of economy stuff—especially machines taking jobs. They know future employment statistics better than many 30-year veteran business executives running publicly traded companies. The dangerous truth is many young people know they likely won’t have jobs in the future. And neither will most of the executives for that matter, since they too can (and will) be replaced by super intelligent machines programmed to make sound mathematical business decisions.
LONDON The world’s first life-saving gene therapy for children, developed by Italian scientists and GlaxoSmithKline, has been recommended for approval in Europe, boosting the pioneering technology to fix faulty genes.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Friday it had endorsed the therapy, called Strimvelis, for a tiny number of children with ADA Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (ADA-SCID) for whom no matching bone marrow donor is available.
Around 15 children a year are born in Europe with the ultra-rare genetic disorder, which leaves them unable to make a type of white blood cell. They rarely survive beyond two years unless their immune function is restored with a suitable bone marrow transplant.
Blast from the past. Someone in an astrobiology group seemed to question the validity of the question in my recent story on 5 Questions For E.T. about whether the universe is artificial. Here’s my response:
In the dog days of summer, when a gush of hot air from a Fifth Avenue subway grate can feel as real as it gets, take heart that the downtown traffic nipping at your heels may just be part of a cosmic-scale computer simulation.
The idea that the cosmos and everything in it could be a super-advanced civilization’s version of Xbox first came to the fore a little over a decade ago.
In a Philosophical Quarterly paper, philosophy professor Nick Bostrom at Oxford University in the U.K., posits that what we observe as our universe may in fact be a very advanced simulation designed by our distant progeny.
However, Rob Ott, a computer scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who did work on the system—Deep Learning Interface for Accounting (DELIA)—notes that it simply held all of the missing money, some $40,120.16, in a “rainy day” account. “I don’t think you can attribute malice,” he says. “I’m sure DELIA was going to give the money back.”
Technologists shocked by program’s ability to set its own priorities—such as getting rich.
