You've been emphatic that humans need to lean into AI to survive. So tell me the specifics and I'd like specifics of how super intelligence is going to overcome that and deliver on this imagined future where AI cures all disease and allows us to live forever.
Sundar announced yesterday with Demis, Demis Hassabis and Sundar Pichai from Google. They created a new model that created a novel hypothesis about a way to turn a cold cancer into a hot cancer. So often times cancer sit in the body undetected by the immune system, they made it hot and so the immune system would say like, there you are, or like you can treat it. A lot of people have criticized AI like, 'Oh, AI can't do anything novel. It just replicates human understanding.' But yesterday was one of the first demonstrations of a genuinely novel insight. It thought it up itself. That showed AI understands how cells communicate, understands the context in which they exist and can talk back and say, 'What about this?' And then it was replicated in an experiment and it was correct. So, this is what I've been hoping for for years. Like, we're going to start making these little breakthroughs, then big breakthroughs, and then we're all going to say, 'Huh?' And so, all of a sudden, this idea that we may be the first generation who won't die. People may say like, 'Maybe it's not crazy. Won't die, but won't die of that.' Take that and multiply it by every disease out there. The study that just came out of China, if it replicates, they showed age reversal of equivalent of 9 to 15 years in humans across over 50% of human tissue, which is a gigantic demonstration. I have no doubt we were going to be living longer. That's not, I don't think, you know, maybe not today, but it's sort of like probably back in when Orville Wright took off. I'm not going to be the person on the beach saying he only went 8 feet. You go, 'Oh my god, he flew.' Like that's the point. But again, you're saying we won't die. We will die. We just will die later.
If we travel back in time and we're hanging out with Homo erectus, and I say, 'Hey, Homo erectus, tell me about the future of our existence. What's going to happen?' They will use their existing mental models and say, 'I will hunt and I will forage and I'll do this and that.' They will not say that you're going to discover a microscopic world of atoms and molecules.
Right. Like, they couldn't have imagined it. Exactly. And I'm saying that right now relative to AI it is possible we are as naive as Homo erectus. Certainly, but that's like the idea. I mean you had a Dan Brown book here I saw that he just wrote about in his recent book that if Mozart came back and heard a speaker he'd think there was a little orchestra in the little box and he certainly would have soon understood it. We have a rate of adaptation as a species for a new idea to be presented, for me to ingest it, for me to be like, I'm okay with it now. So, we have a certain rate. Then AI has a certain rate. And if you start pairing those rates, you just have an open question and say, will we keep up to date with what's happening to AI or will it exceed us? And if it exceeds us, will it exceed it in ways we can't quite comprehend? And so, I'm not stating with any certainty whether it's good or bad. All I'm saying is this is a big moment. And what we don't want to do is walk into this moment as a warfaring sick addicted culture that kills ourselves for these points. I imagined being in the year 2500. And you're looking back at the early 21st century, our time and place, and you're wondering what did Homo sapiens do in that moment, in that century, right? And I thought they might say two things. One is this is when Homo sapiens gave birth to super intelligence, and this is when we figured out we would no longer die. It's solely a question as a species. What are we capable of? And that's where I arrived at. It wasn't like I want to live forever, therefore I'm going through this. It was that trying to put a finger on what is the thing that can be done.
So why do you phrase it like that? Because it is phrased and you market it and it's quite marketed. I want to live forever.
Oh, I don't, I specifically do not say I want to live forever.
Mhm. Okay. But you said you don't want to die. Don't die is very different. Okay. Explain that for me.
Okay. Don't die is what you experience right now and what I experience right now. Like if we felt the window shatter, you and I would leave this room and seek protection, right? Like we go to a safe place. So don't die is our instinct in not wanting to die in this moment. And so this goes back to this is going to be one more step for you. Okay. So in marrying the two concepts of giving birth to super intelligence and we are the first generation won't die. My entire endeavor is not about health. It's about AI alignment. If you just have to create a practical map and say what things need to happen in order for us to solve aging, we know a jellyfish can be immortal. We know a hydra can be immortal. We know that immortality has been solved in biology. It's just not in the human species. To do that, you probably need to have like a jellyfish at the bottom of the sea. Those jobs you say how could you practically take those learnings and apply them to human? You need a certain level of scientific understanding and tools to do that. We have those.
Sure. But why not just study jellyfish instead of yourself? Measure everything because I think it comes from a mentality that a lot of people, and I will lump you in with people, that everything is measurable, that every single thing is measurable when in fact the human body is a very, I mean or everything's like a computer, it's not like a computer, the human brain is not like a computer if you look at the depths of it.
I've become the most measured person in the world offering a demonstration of what characterization can happen and then I sift through the entire thing and say I'm going to give it to you for free. I open source those and say you can do your own thing. Like I will tell you exactly how to make it. And when you go out in the world right now it's absolute disaster.
So how do you isolate the impact of each of these protocols especially about short-term and long-term safety and confidently endorse their effectiveness?
Yeah. I mean we do this, we just completed a study looking at hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We just did it with Sana where we measured over 100 biomarkers before I did hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I did the therapy. We isolated all my therapies during that time period and we measured my biomarkers again. So yes, it's imperfect because there are variables we can't control in the world, but generally speaking, it's a fairly controlled experiment. Many of the studies around hyperbaric are mixed. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been the most efficacious therapy we've done.
That you've done. Yeah. For your body. But we look at population level evidence. So it's not just mine. We say what does all the evidence say of the people who have done this? What kind of effect size did they see in their brains in the microbiome in the telomeres and we say what does mine show, have a comparative set. Yeah, so but what I'm saying considering the wide variations in human biology are they even comparable? That is, it's possibly irresponsible to say one thing that happens to you is the thing that happens to another.
Large scale double blind placebo control trials are the gold standard. Sure, we all want them. Yes. In the meantime, we everybody needs to make decisions on what they do in life. And so what I'm trying to do is I say, 'Okay, look, here's the evidence base for hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Here's the population level data. I'm going to do this experiment, measure this, do the therapy, and share my results.' So I share it. Then I can say, 'Hey everybody, if you want to repeat my experiment, you can do the following thing.' The vector of criticizing me for experimenting and sharing results, right? It's like it's such a narrow...
Well, I think it's because you're an influencer and there's plenty of bad information. What is the alternative? So, what do we do, the standard gold standard double blind? Well, you're rich. Yeah. How many studies could I fund? A lot. So could all of you. Yeah. But like for the number of variables, but the thing is like this is the thing is it's not practical to sit there and gripe and be like, don't run experiments on yourself and share your data. Just wait for everybody to do... Like how do you get by in life? What do you do?
Well, I think people think you should not be using your data to represent things and make decisions, but isn't the gold standard of nobody should experiment...
No, I didn't say that. I said I think you are underdescribing your influence.
I would say if you look at the range of the health advice out in the world, we're probably the safest vector of advice out there.
You are. Yeah. Because it's we follow happened to you? Nope.
Because we follow the most robust scientific evidence in the world. You really do not worry if they're not gold standard studies. It's just this is what happened to me. Folks, even in the gold standard studies, you're going to have limitations. And every scientist that has written a paper knows that they have arranged that data in a certain way and made certain complicated decisions with that data. It is never clean. It is always complicated. And so this is the thing is when scientists come at me and they somehow want to maintain some kind of higher position. That is not the case.
You think that's just it? Maybe some of them are worried. Hey, I look, safety. I have seen this behind-the-scenes process now. I did not become educated as a scientist. I have sat in these rooms and had I've been in these conversations where people are trying to figure out how to present a data set to the world in the paper they're writing. They have incentives to write papers that achieve certain outcomes to be in certain journals. It is not a sacred process. It is a vicious competitive process. So when they attack you, when these scientists attack you for being, you know, a con man. I've heard that many times.
I'm not. So first, I'm not a con man. I'm just telling you what they're doing. I'm doing my experiments. I'm sharing my data, right, to the best of my ability. But when they come at this as somehow I'm the person that needs to be ridiculed because this method is not good. I'm going to point the spotlight back and say the public is not aware of what you do. I understand what you do. It does remind me a little bit of tech people who do this where they go. I remember having a very elaborate conversation with Mark Zuckerberg about problems on social media, anti-addictive stuff many years ago. This was a decade ago. And I said down the line this is going to be bad. Like ultimately when the toxic stew gets online, it's going to cause problems. And he literally goes, 'But what about cable?' I'm like, 'Yeah, no, that's an industry is declining. So, I'm going to look at you who's going on the up.' And he goes, 'What about newspapers?' And I'm like, 'Again, you're shift, it feels a little shifty. It's like they're also corrupt is your argument or they're not corrupt.' No, I'm saying that I am trying to solve a very practical problem that exists for billions of humans. What do I do? And on that stream of thought, it's like who do I trust? How do I know what to do? How do I know what a process is? And I'm trying to say like here's a way to think about it. Here's how you understand scientific evidence. Here's how you understand measurement. I'm trying to like a basic class in scientific method and medical measurement for the human body. Right? Then I become a focal point of criticism of how everyone disagrees with that methodology. Right. Which is fine. Like that's what science is, what society is.
That's why so you think it's because they're priests and don't want to give up their priestly robes.
That is the natural human response to any kind of situation to him and offer. When every ounce of your life is measured, are you living? If you have a dashboard on your car, you're not going to be like way too much information. Really don't care about the oil. You know, the oil is different than all the rest of the nonsense. Or when a baby's born, you're like, 'Honestly, too many panels for the baby, too excessive. Just give me half the measurements.' So it's always the context on the frame. When LeBron James goes to bed on time and eats well and exercises and measures his metabolic activity, people are like, 'That's amazing.' LeBron, when I do it, the reason why they criticize me is they don't know the category I belong.
Except LeBron James plays basketball. Then what is your goal in that regard?
I'm trying to demonstrate the science of aging. So a living experiment to actually quantify. Now this is useful because if somebody has a health issue, it becomes real, right? It's no longer like this. Oh, this dude's a... It's like, how do I actually know what works? And that's what I'm trying to show them is there is a scientific process to measure. Do something and then measure, which is weirdly absent from medicine. The point I'm trying to make is not that we've solved aging, not that we know everything. I'm trying to show that you can approach health with a scientific method. That's it.
That you can, which a lot of people do. I think you're not the first to do just you.
Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. But I'm saying like this is the point I'm trying to make though, right? Is that health generally in America right now does not follow the scientific method.
When you go into your doctor, right, and it's like, I have a blank thing going on, you get prescribed the drug, right? Sometimes it's usually not like, let's do a comprehensive panel of markers. Let's assess where you're at now. Let's assess what the potential therapies could be. Let's then do that therapy and measure the markers again.
Right. It's expensive and doesn't fit into, you're talking about preventative care over the course of a lifetime monitoring. Even robust care if I have an issue and it just doesn't operate in that capacity. Well, it's solving a problem in the immediate. That's what you're talking about versus a systemic, you're talking about a systemic solution.
Yeah. Exactly. And I'm trying to basically say that like this is a reasonable approach of how everybody should be managing.
Okay. You got a lot of attention for publicly saying you're no longer taking rapamycin after nearly 5 years of experimentation, off label experimentation. It's still far from being proven to extend life in humans. But doing things to your body based on preliminary and cherry-picked data hasn't stopped people from doing it. So why make such a big stink about this change in protocol when in fact there is potential? Why did you do that? Do you worry that your public criticism might have real impact on funding for necessary research around something like this that might be helpful to people? I mean, as you said, the rapamycin is kind of like the golden child of the longevity community. It's one of very few things that actually gets a high praise from a wide range of scientists, right? A little bit like Ozempic right now. It's a drug that suppresses the immune system and so it's not free. You have to pay the consequence of a whole bunch of side effects like mouth sores, disrupted lipids, metabolic activity, etc. So that it also suppresses cancer surveillance cell activity. So it's suppressing an important part of your body which otherwise looks for cancer.
And so we just said we don't think this trade-off is worth it because we have risks that we're not quite certain what they are and how significant they are. And then a month later there was a study that came out in Yale that showed that on 16 epigenetic clocks, methylation clocks, it increased the speed of aging.
Right. You said that. And so yeah, I mean I think it's like one of these things where we're early early days for biological aging. We don't know what's going to work and what's not going to work. It was a reasonable decision. Do you think you did damage to real research into something that might potentially be very important for humans? Like because you have influence like pretending you don't have influence is kind of silly.
Maybe even increase it. Increase funding because they don't believe you. Because it now has a new hurdle to overcome. There's a new objective to demonstrate that's efficacious in certain ways. You're a friend by being difficult. But like yeah, you're trying to characterize the drug. You're trying to basically say how can we see both the benefits and the side effects and then weigh those two. So we offered further characterization of it.
How do you handle the criticism that you were doing it to take attention away from that New York Times piece about you, for example? That was one of the accusations.
