Category: All articles

Bridging the gap between scientists and clinicians: profile of Morten Scheibye-Knudsen

Bridging the gap between scientists and clinicians: profile of Morten Scheibye-Knudsen

The longevity "bug" Early in his medical career, Morten Scheibye-Knudsen spent six months working as a physician in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. It is a small town of fewer than 20,000 people, but he was enchanted, and almost didn't return to his native Denmark. We should be grateful that he did listen to the call of anti-aging research, and head back to Copenhagen: he went on to become one of the leading pioneers applying modern artificial intelligence (AI) to the field of longevity medicine. Scheibye-Knudsen caught the longevity "bug" as a teenager, appalled by watching his grandparents grow frail...
AI for optimal health: profile of Evelyne (Eva) Yehudit Bischof

AI for optimal health: profile of Evelyne (Eva) Yehudit Bischof

Workaholics Becoming a workaholic seems to be an occupational hazard among longevity researchers and advocates. A few weeks ago, Eva Bischof was involved in a serious accident, which gave her concussion, and badly injured her arm. Despite being a highly qualified doctor, the therapy she prescribed for herself was not bed rest - but work. You probably have to be a workaholic to secure the qualifications and the professional appointments on Bischof's CV. Especially if you come from humble origins: Bischof is the daughter of a tailor and an accountant's assistant, and she spent her summers in her grandparents' village,...
Putting AI to work in longevity research: profile of Alex Zhavoronkov

Putting AI to work in longevity research: profile of Alex Zhavoronkov

A man on a mission Alex Zhavoronkov is a man on a mission. He is extremely focused - some might say obsessive. He works 18 hours a day 365 days a year. He takes no holidays, and has no plans to start a family - unless he meets a potential partner who is at least as focused as himself. The subject of this relentless attention is the aging process – how to understand it, arrest it, and reverse it. In 2013, Zhavoronkov published a book called “The Ageless Generation” which argued that everyone over about 30 years old is effectively...
Tooling the AI longevity revolution: profile of Michael Antonov

Tooling the AI longevity revolution: profile of Michael Antonov

Michael Antonov caught “the longevity bug” after helping to found Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headgear company, and selling it to Facebook for $2.3bn. He went back to college and taught himself biochemistry, and now he invests in startups which are developing the tools to allow us to understand the fabulously complex mechanics of our bodies. Russian emigres What is it with Russians? If you throw a ball into the audience during a conference on aging there is a pretty good chance it will be caught by a Russian, or someone of Russian extraction. Michael Antonov attributes this partly to...
Using AI to convert sick care into health care

Using AI to convert sick care into health care

An Apple a day… Later this year, the 7th series of the phenomenally successful Apple Watch will be launched. The company has unveiled a new watch every September since 2015, and the cottage industry of Apple followers speculates that the series 7 will feature blood glucose measurement, using a relatively new technology of terahertz electromagnetic radiation. Blood glucose measurement is especially useful for diabetics. Blood alcohol measurement, and better sleep monitoring are also candidates for inclusion this time round. With the Watch, Apple has not simply added another device to its product line-up. CEO Tim Cook has lofty ambitions for...
Book review: "Framers" by Kenn Cukier

Book review: "Framers" by Kenn Cukier

Models In the 1980s, a novel and important idea about the nature of human thought and consciousness gained currency: the notion that one of the most powerful functions of our minds is to create and evolve models of the world. Once established, these models shape our perception and our purpose. We cleave to these models, and we are prepared to distort reality inside our heads in order not to falsify them. Daniel Kahneman called this the framing effect, and he saw it as a flaw in human reasoning. He described how students responded very differently to an incentive, depending how...
Book review: "Genius Makers" by Cade Metz

Book review: "Genius Makers" by Cade Metz

Cade Metz Cade Metz has had a dream job for the last decade. He has been hanging out with the people responsible for the most important technological developments of our time. He has had a ringside seat at what may turn out to be the pivotal episode in human history. The book he has written about it, “Genius Makers” is based on 400 interviews conducted over eight years for “Wired” and “The New York Times”, plus another 100 carried out specifically for the book. Many of the people he has interviewed are larger-than-life characters, and given the egos involved and...
Book review: "A Thousand Brains" by Jeff Hawkins

Book review: "A Thousand Brains" by Jeff Hawkins

Jeff Hawkins has a new theory of the brain. It is interesting and persuasive. But to me, the most interesting observation in the book is not about brains – it’s about how an intelligent species could make its presence known across the vast distances of space. It seems that was also the most interesting part of the book for Richard Dawkins, who contributed a foreword. More about that later: first the brain stuff. The old brain and the new Hawkins has been wondering how brains work for a long time, ever since he read a 1979 essay by Francis Crick (the...
3rd editions, 2 books, 3 formats

3rd editions, 2 books, 3 formats

I spent a lot of 2020 updating and expanding these two books, and the third editions of both are now available in all three formats – kindle, paperback and audio. Part One (AI Today), and Part Two (AI Tomorrow) are now common to both books, and they account for most of the updates to Surviving AI.  Part Three of The Economic Singularity is also significantly updated and developed, to the extent that I have changed the book’s sub-title, which is now “Artificial Intelligence, and Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism”. If you know anyone who hasn’t yet read these books, now would be a great...
Into the Roaring Twenties

Into the Roaring Twenties

Plague “The darkest hour is just before the dawn,” said an English theologian called Thomas Fuller in 1650, and many people since. Covid-19 has been a terrible plague, like many terrible plagues before. At the time of writing it has killed two million people worldwide, and tragically, it will kill many more this year. Two million people have left widows and orphans to grieve them, and millions more face economic ruin or lasting insecurity. In some countries, incompetent and dishonest political leaders have made the situation far worse than it need have been. The recovery is likely to be K-shaped,...
The Impact of AI on Education

The Impact of AI on Education

Of all the areas of life where artificial intelligence will have an impact, the biggest might well be education. This is because learning is so important, and also because current provision often leaves a lot to be desired. This is not generally the fault of teachers. They are the active ingredient in today’s education system, but they are expensive, and not scalable. In most countries they are under-valued, and burdened by absurd paperwork. They are also human, which means they are variable. Think back to your own school days: how many of your teachers were positively inspirational? As many as...
The Impact of AI on the Law

The Impact of AI on the Law

Hello, New York! For the first time, lawyers can apply legal analytics to cases heard in New York County Supreme Court (“New York County”). Lex Machina, a subsidiary of RELX, the British information corporate formerly known as Reed Elsevier, is announcing today the publication of data on 119,000 cases. The data is based on both dockets (analogous to the abstracts of academic papers) and documents (the full papers). Numerically, this caseload is not a massive expansion to the 4.5m cases already in Lex Machina’s database, but Karl Harris, Lex Machina’s CEO, argues it is an important milestone because New York...
Artificial Intelligence and Digital Twins

Artificial Intelligence and Digital Twins

Augmented reality in supermarkets Have you ever wondered why supermarkets don’t offer augmented reality guides to the locations of their products? Instead of criss-crossing the store, hunting for the tomato juice or the paprika, why can’t you upload your shopping list into something like Google Maps and have it guide you on the most efficient route around the aisles? It’s not because supermarket owners are afraid you won’t make impulse purchases. It’s because that sort of navigation (or wayfinder) technology is hard. But it’s coming soon. Pebbles In 2015, Emil Alon sold a company to Facebook for $60m. The company...
The Impact of AI on Surgery

The Impact of AI on Surgery

Telemedicine “We’ve witnessed ten years of change in a month” is a typical description of how the pandemic is accelerating the use of telemedicine. Before the virus, video appointments made up only 1% of the 350m consultations which Britain’s National Health Service handles each year. Companies like Docly, eConsult and AccuRx are changing that. The latter claims that 90% of primary care clinics in England are now using its video-calling system. The most dramatic form of telemedicine is remote surgery. It is not new, but it is growing, and it offers enormous benefits. It can help overcome the shortage of...
The Impact of AI on Healthcare

The Impact of AI on Healthcare

Opportunity knocks Healthcare is an obvious sector to deploy AI in. It generates tsunamis of data, vast amounts of money are spent on it, and there are plenty of opportunities to improve the quality of its products and services by making them more intelligent and intelligible. It is a mistake to think of healthcare as a single monolithic entity. Will Smart is the former CIO for the NHS in England, and he points out that healthcare carries out the activities of numerous different industries, including hotels, catering, research, professional services, janitorial services, logistics, manufacturing, and many others. What kinds of...
The Impact of AI on Workspaces

The Impact of AI on Workspaces

Big buildings move slowly It is a truth universally acknowledged that artificial intelligence will change everything. In the next few decades, the world will become intelligible, and in many ways, intelligent. But insiders suggest that the world of big office real estate will get there more slowly - at least in the world’s major cities. The real estate industry in London, New York, Hong Kong and other world cities moves in cycles of 10 or 15 years. This is the period of the lease. After a tense renewal negotiation, and perhaps a big row, landlord and tenant are generally happy...
The Impact of AI on Journalism

The Impact of AI on Journalism

Automated writing Back in 2014, the Los Angeles Times published a report about an earthquake three minutes after it happened. This feat was possible because a staffer had developed a bot (a software robot) called Quakebot to write automated articles based on data generated by the US Geological Survey. Today, AIs write hundreds of thousands of the articles that are published by mainstream media outlets every week. At first, most of the Natural Language Generation (NLG) tools producing these articles were provided by software companies like Narrative Science. Today, many media organisations have developed in-house versions. The BBC has Juicer,...
Book review: “The Price Of Tomorrow” by Jeff Booth

Book review: “The Price Of Tomorrow” by Jeff Booth

Two big themes Jeff Booth is a successful Canadian entrepreneur. His book “The Price of Tomorrow” is a warning about two dangerous trends which he thinks are not receiving enough attention. The first is that technology and price deflation will cause lasting widespread unemployment. The second is that the global economy is underpinned by an unstable mountain of debt. These are obviously serious concerns, and at least on technological unemployment I think he is largely correct – particularly with regard to his proposed solution. Successful entrepreneur In 1999, Booth co-founded BuildDirect, a technology company designed to simplify the building industry....