Can AI make us immortal?

‘Foreeeever young, I want to be forever young….’ I can still hear myself singing this on my 21^st birthday, bottle of prosecco in one hand, cigarette in the other. This has very much been a recurring wish throughout my life to date, a desire to hold on to my youth and swerve the crushing inevitability of growing up. Waking up to a mountain of empty bottles and cigarette butts with no hangover once deemed a triumphant feat, now it feels slightly more tragic. Not helped by the sore head that likes to remind you youth doesn’t last. Getting old sucks - BUT if only there was a way to reverse one’s lifespan? Cue the world’s richest billionaires coming along to save the day.

With the help of AI and technology, could a path to immortality actually be in sight?

It sounds like an impossible task, given that ageing is a fundamental part of life and death is programmed into every cell in our bodies. But, if AI is applied to research the science of cell programming and discover how we hack our cells and recode them, then suddenly it starts to sound quite plausible. At least in my head. Firms like Alto-Labs, heavily invested in by Bezos, are exploring biological reprogramming in the pursuit of ‘anti-ageing’. Calico – set up by Larry Page (Google Co-Founder) - has a more explicit mission to ‘solve death’. Then there are the outright extremes, like Bryan Johnson waging a full-on war against the aging process, his slogan – ‘don’t die’.

Don’t get me wrong, I am pro advancements in healthcare - there are some very valuable companies attempting to use AI to cure Alzheimers like Biogen, or to identify early signs of Cancer like Enlitic, Cyrcadia, CureMetrix.  But there is something quite troubling, grotesque even, about the idea that humans could double their lifespan or even become immortal.

First of all - it’s greedy. If you’ve ever watched one of those food eating contests where they sit in front of mountains of burgers, pies, cakes with the sole aim of racing through it and finishing everything, they’re never commenting on the taste and quality of the food. It’s all about pushing the body to extremes and exceeding its limitations - that is how you win. It is the same sentiment that is fuelling the drive to ‘live forever’. But are these billionaires really thinking about the quality of life? Or is it just a way of grandiosely showing that they are above the rest of us, limits don’t apply to them. Just like jetting off into space, they are reiterating that they can achieve for themselves what the rest of us will find impossible. Inspiring in a way, but when it’s driven by egos like the Trump-supporting Peter Thiele (founder of PayPal), to clearly elevate their image and status, it makes me feel slightly queasy.

If we were able to crack the code to immortality, what would happen to your sense of self?

Would you get married? Until Death Do Us Part – Oh Sh*t! The beauty of life is that it’s impermanent. Steve Jobs once said that mortality is ‘the single best invention in life’ and I’d have to agree with him (although inventing Bloody Mary’s is a close second).  Wouldn’t life be a lot less fun if there was no end to it? Even if the tech moguls find ways to re-programme our biological bodies like computers, and stop us from shutting down, there’s no vaccine or cell solution to stop us from being hit by a bus or being victim to extreme weather conditions. In fact, the idea of dying from natural disasters would become unimaginably terrifying. Getting into a car or plane puts a lot more at stake when you know you are potentially losing out on a life of immortality. 

There has also been research into (brace yourselves) artificial immortality. There’s a transhumanist movement that believes in ethically using technology to prolong a human’s life. The idea behind this is that you can transfer consciousness to artificial bodies and conquer deaths. Essentially you can set up ‘mind files’ – a dataset of your personal memories and experiences captured and stored. They are then uploaded in AI avatars that can mimic you, so that when you die a technological representation of you is left behind. We’ve seen similar manifestations in holograms of ABBA, Tupac, Michael Jackson, but this is next level. The movement argues that we are doing this already through platforms like Meta, Instagram and X. In sharing experiences with our friends and family online, we have already gone some way in merging our minds with machines.

Immortality in a biological or artificial sense is in my view a step too far. I don’t want to live forever, so the billionaire egos can crack on.. I’m going to get old gracefully and I’m grateful that the novelty of being 21, drinking and chain smoking, is now confined to my youthful past.