Our topic in this episode is progress with ending aging. Our guest is the person who literally wrote the book on that subject, namely the book, “Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime”. He is Aubrey de Grey, who describes himself in his Twitter biography as “spearheading the global crusade to defeat aging”.

In pursuit of that objective, Aubrey co-founded the Methuselah Foundation in 2003, the SENS Research Foundation in 2009, and the LEV Foundation, that is the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, in 2022, where he serves as President and Chief Science Officer.

Full disclosure: David also has a role on the executive management team of LEV Foundation, but for this recording he was wearing his hat as co-host of the London Futurists Podcast.

The conversation opens with this question: "When people are asked about ending aging, they often say the idea sounds nice, but they see no evidence for any actual progress toward ending aging in humans. They say that they’ve heard talk about that subject for years, or even decades, but wonder when all that talk is going to result in people actually living significantly longer. How do you respond?"

Selected follow-ups:

• Aubrey de Grey on X (Twitter)
• The book Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
• The Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation
• The SENS paradigm for ending aging , contrasted with the "Hallmarks of Aging" - a 2023 article in Rejuvenation Research
• Progress reports from the current RMR project
• The plan for RMR 2
• The RAID (Rodent Aging Interventions Database) analysis that guided the design of RMR 1 and 2
• Longevity Summit Dublin (LSD): 13-16 June 2024
• Unblocking the Brain’s Drains to Fight Alzheimer’s - Doug Ethell of Leucadia Therapeutics at LSD 2023 (explains the possible role of the cribriform plate)
• Targeting Telomeres to Clear Cancer – Vlad Vitoc of MAIA Biotechnology at LSD 2023
• How to Run a Lifespan Study of 1,000 Mice - Danique Wortel of Ichor Life Sciences at LSD 2023
• XPrize Healthspan
• The Dublin Longevity Declaration ("DLD")

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

As artificial intelligence models become increasingly powerful, they both raise - and might help to answer - some very important questions about one of the most intriguing, fascinating aspects of our lives, namely consciousness.

It is possible that in the coming years or decades, we will create conscious machines. If we do so without realising it, we might end up enslaving them, torturing them, and killing them over and over again. This is known as mind crime, and we must avoid it.

It is also possible that very powerful AI systems will enable us to understand what our consciousness is, how it arises, and even how to manage it – if we want to do that.

Our guest today is the ideal guide to help us explore the knotty issue of consciousness. Anil Seth is professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He is amongst the most cited scholars on the topics of neuroscience and cognitive science globally, and a regular contributor to newspapers and TV programmes.

His most recent book was published in 2021, and is called “Being You – a new science of consciousness”.

The first question sets the scene for the conversation that follows: "In your book, you conclude that consciousness may well only occur in living creatures. You say 'it is life, rather than information processing, that breathes the fire into the equations.' What made you conclude that?"

Selected follow-ups:

• Anil Seth's website
• Books by Anil Seth, including Being You
• Consciousness in humans and other things - presentation by Anil Seth at The Royal Society, March 2024
• Is consciousness more like chess or the weather? - an interview with Anil Seth
• Autopoiesis - Wikipedia article about the concept introduced by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela
• Akinetic mutism, Wikipedia
• Cerebral organoid (Brain organoid), Wikipedia
• AI Scientists: Safe and Useful AI? - by Yoshua Bengio, on AIs as oracles
• Ex Machina (2014 film, written and directed by Alex Garland)
• The Conscious Electromagnetic Information (Cemi) Field Theory by Johnjoe McFadden
• The Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness by Susan Pockett

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

Our guest in this episode is Adam Kovacevich. Adam is the Founder and CEO of the Chamber of Progress, which describes itself as a center-left tech industry policy coalition that works to ensure that all citizens benefit from technological leaps, and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly.

Adam has had a front row seat for more than 20 years in the tech industry’s political maturation, and he advises companies on navigating the challenges of political regulation.

For example, Adam spent 12 years at Google, where he led a 15-person policy strategy and external affairs team. In that role, he drove the company’s U.S. public policy campaigns on topics such as privacy, security, antitrust, intellectual property, and taxation.

We had two reasons to want to talk with Adam. First, to understand the kerfuffle that has arisen from the lawsuit launched against Apple by the U.S. Department of Justice and sixteen state Attorney Generals. And second, to look ahead to possible future interactions between tech industry regulators and the industry itself, especially as concerns about Artificial Intelligence rise in the public mind.

Selected follow-ups:

• Adam Kovacevich's website
• The Chamber of Progress
• Gartner Hype Cycle
• "Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets"
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
• Epic Games v. Apple (Wikipedia)
• "AirTags Are the Best Thing to Happen to Tile" (Wired)
• Adobe Firefly
• The EU AI Act

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration