The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
Until 2022, science had discovered about 190,000 proteins. Then DeepMind discovered about 200,000 more. AI applications developed since will allow the full modelling of individual humans for tailor-made drugs to treat cancer and slow ageing, Ray Kurzweil writes in a bylined piece in the Economist that truly earns the byline. Kurzweil foresees a time between 2029 and 2035 when an AI-powered medical revolution delivers average lifespan increases of more than 12 months per year, meaning the human species will have reached “longevity escape velocity”. From this point – for those who can afford the latest treatments – “ageing will not increase their actual chance of dying”. Kurzweil is not a fiction writer but he echoes one: Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Red Mars (pub. 1992) imagines 100 pioneering Mars colonists extending their lives almost indefinitely thanks to full-genome modelling offered to them as a spacefaring elite – but not to those who come after.
