In an interview with Jon Hernández on his YouTube channel @la_inteligencia_artificial, Dr. Derya Unutmaz, an immunologist and collaborator at OpenAI, made clear the incredible potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to change human health. His message was direct:
“If you manage to live the next ten years, you will live another fifty because we will solve aging.”
According to him, AI will not only help cure diseases that today seem incurable, but it could also reverse aging, extending life in ways we never imagined possible.
The AI Revolution in Medicine
Dr. Unutmaz, a professor and researcher at the Jackson Laboratory, is optimistic about the advances being made with AI. He was chosen by OpenAI to test advanced tools like GPT-4 Pro, which have enabled him to develop new treatments and explore new ideas in biology and medicine. According to Dr. Unutmaz, “this could be the greatest discovery since the beginning of civilization”. Tools like GPT-4 Pro are helping to design personalized treatments and accelerate the discovery of new drugs.
Additionally, the combination of AI with advances like AlphaFold, which predicted the structure of all human proteins in just one day, has opened up new possibilities. Models like ESM-3, which can predict how molecules interact in real-time, are already emerging, allowing for the creation of safer and more effective drugs.
End of Aging?
For Dr. Unutmaz, aging is “the mother of all diseases”. Although it is generally seen as something natural and inevitable, he believes AI has the power to stop and even reverse it.
“There is no physical limit to life in biology. If we can identify and fix failures in biological systems, we could maintain life indefinitely,”
he said.
Aging happens because over time, the body loses the ability to repair and renew its systems. Dr. Unutmaz sees in AI the opportunity to fix these failures by adjusting genes, proteins, and metabolism to reverse the effects of aging. According to him, the key lies in “digital twins”, virtual simulations that replicate the organs and systems of the human body. These twins would allow treatments to be tested safely before being applied to the real body.
The “Bio Singularity” and Life Extension
One of Dr. Unutmaz’s most striking ideas is the “bio singularity”, a concept he coined 20 years ago. This is the idea that, when advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence merge, human biology will change radically. According to him, once we reach that singularity, medical advancements will happen so fast that we will be able to cure diseases like cancer or heart problems in record time.
“We will reverse aging. We will be able to take an 80 or 100-year-old person and return them to the biological state of someone 20 years old,”
Dr. Unutmaz predicted.
This future, according to him, is closer than we think.
“Don’t Die in the Next Ten Years”
One of Dr. Unutmaz’s clearest messages is “don’t die in the next ten years”. For him, we are so close to making discoveries that will change history, and missing out on these advancements would be a tragedy. He believes that every year we live could add more years to our lives thanks to scientific advances. “What we do now will determine whether we get to benefit from the discoveries that will change history,” he said, referring to people like Bryan Johnson, who follows extreme health routines to extend his life until scientific advances reach their peak.
A Society Transformed by AI
The impact of AI will not be limited to medicine. Dr. Unutmaz also believes that these advances will profoundly change our society. Although automation and AI could eliminate some jobs, they could also create a society where we don’t have to worry about work or material concerns.
“In the future, robots and AI will do all the work, freeing us up to focus on what really matters: living,”
he explained.
Towards a Future Without Limits
For Dr. Unutmaz, AI has unlimited potential. “I don’t believe there is any problem that we can’t solve with AI,” he said, referring to how this technology could be key to solving huge challenges like aging or cancer. However, he also warned about the ethical challenges we must face to ensure that these advancements benefit all of humanity, not just a few privileged individuals.
“Just make sure you don’t die in the next ten years,” he repeated, pointing out that we are living in a crucial historical moment. With the advances in AI and biotechnology, the future of humanity is about to change forever.
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