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Jeff Bezos pops champagne after emerging from the New Shepard capsule after his spaceflight on July 20, 2021.
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All things must die, according to the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, but that could be about to change.

A growing number of tech billionaires have decided they want to use their enormous wealth to try to help humans “cheat death.”

Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos, Alphabet‘s Larry Page, Oracle‘s Larry Ellison and Palantir’s Peter Thiel are just a few of the super-rich who have taken a keen interest in the fast-emerging field of longevity, according to interviews, books and media reports.

While breakthroughs are far from guaranteed, they hope that various medicines, therapies and other life science technologies will enable humans to live well beyond 100 years old and possibly to 200, 300, or even longer.

But are their efforts going to benefit humanity as a whole or just an elite few? It’s a tricky question that divides opinion.

The filter down effect

“Technologies that initially are only affordable to the rich typically become more widely available with time,” Stefan Schubert, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science who specializes in “effective altruism,” told CNBC. Indeed, this is true of everything from air travel to smartphones and medicine.

Tech investor Jaan Tallinn, the co-founder of Skype, told CNBC that Silicon Valley’s quest to live forever will eventually benefit humanity as a whole.

“I think involuntary death is clearly morally bad, which makes the quest for longevity a morally noble thing to engage in,” Tallinn said. “Early adopters always tend to pay more and take larger risks than the ‘mass market,’ so if therapies start off on the expensive/risky side, that’s to be expected.”

Tallinn added that he thinks it’s “counterproductive” to require that a new service be available to everyone before anyone is allowed to use it, but he said he understands the instinct.

Sean O hEigeartaigh, co-director of Cambridge University’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk, told CNBC that many advances in longevity science could have broad benefits, adding that they could reduce the occurrence or severity of older age-related diseases including dementia and heart health.

“Extending max lifespan significantly in the near-term seems unlikely to me; but identifying and arresting aging-related factors that increase preponderance and severity of age-related conditions is more plausible,” Ó hÉigeartaigh said.

Some are concerned that the Earth’s finite resources could come under strain if people live longer, healthier lives.

However, by the time meaningful life extension advances are made, Ó hÉigeartaigh expects population numbers to be more stable in more parts of the world.

“I expect meaningful lifespan extension to be a century or more away, and by then I expect a parallel change in societal attitude towards euthanasia,” he said, adding that he thinks euthanasia will be more acceptable and more common in the coming years.

What about climate change?

While some believe that billionaires should be able to spend their money on what they see fit, not everyone thinks tech billionaires should be using their money to fund life extension research.

Jon Crowcroft, a computer science professor at Cambridge University, told CNBC they’d be better off pumping more of their billions into climate change mitigation technologies instead of longevity research.

“It’s a bit pointless living forever on a dying planet,” said Crowcroft.

But Tallinn told CNBC he finds the tech billionaire’s efforts to support longevity research “commendable.”

“I think it’s generally unfair to pit good causes against each other in a world where most resources are wasted on morally unimportant or even reprehensible things,” Tallinn said.

Billionaire’s chasing immortality

Bezos, the second richest man in the world behind Elon Musk, has invested some of his $199 billion into a new “rejuvenation” start-up called Altos Labs, according to a report from MIT Technology Review earlier this month.

The anti-ageing start-up, which is said to be pursuing biological reprogramming technology, is reportedly also backed by Russian-Israeli venture capitalist Yuri Milner, who made a fortune as an early investor in Facebook.

Elsewhere, Oracle founder Ellison has donated more than $370 million to research about aging and age-related diseases, according to The New Yorker.

Meanwhile, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page helped launch Calico, a secretive venture that’s tracking mice from birth to death in the hope of finding markers for diseases like diabetes and Alzheimer’s, according to a report in The New Yorker. Calico is part of Alphabet, the holding company that also owns Google.

One of the biggest advocates for life extension among the tech billionaires is Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and Palantir and backed Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal Inc.
VCG | Getty Images

In 2006, he donated $3.5 million to support anti-ageing research through the non-profit Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation. “Rapid advances in biological science foretell of a treasure trove of discoveries this century, including dramatically improved health and longevity for all,” he said at the time. Thiel had upped his investment in Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation to $7 million by 2017, according to Time.

According to The New Yorker, Thiel and Bezos have both invested in San Francisco-based Unity Biotechnology, a company whose founder reportedly said he wants to “vaporize a third of human diseases in the developed world.”

Life extension stocks?

On the other side of the Atlantic, British billionaire Jim Mellon told CNBC last September that he was planning to take Juvenescence, his own life extension company, public in the next six to 12 months.

It’s yet to happen, but Juvenescence is continuing to invest in a wide range of anti-ageing therapies that it thinks have the potential to extend the human life.

One of those investments is Insilico Medicine, which aims to use artificial intelligence for drug discovery. Juvenescence has also backed AgeX Therapeutics, a California-headquartered firm trying to create stem cells that can regenerate ageing tissue, and LyGenesis, which wants to develop a technology that uses lymph nodes as bioreactors to regrow replacement organs.

Other billionaires, including Mike Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of Australian software firm Atlassian, and NEX Group founder Michael Spencer, have invested in Juvenescence.

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Meta extended its ban on new political ads on Facebook and Instagram past Election Day in the U.S.

The social media giant announced the political ads policy update on Monday, extending its ban on new political ads past Tuesday, the original end date for the restriction period.

Meta did not specify the day it will lift the restriction, saying only that the ad blocking will continue “until later this week.” The company did not say why it extended the political advertising restriction period.

The company announced in August that any political ads that ran at least once before Oct. 29 would still be allowed to run on Meta’s services in the final week before Election Day. Other political ads will not be allowed to run.

Organization with eligible ads will have “limited editing capabilities” while the restriction is still in place, Meta said. Those advertisers will be allowed to make scheduling, budgeting and bidding-related changes to their political ads, Meta said.

Meta enacted the same policy in 2020. The company said the policy is in place because “we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”

Google-parent Alphabet announced a similar ad policy update last month, saying it would pause ads relating to U.S. elections from running in the U.S. after the last polls close on Tuesday. Alphabet said it would notify advertisers when it lifts the pause.

Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week, with the bulk of the money spent on down-ballot races throughout the U.S., according to data from advertising analytics firm AdImpact.

Watch: Tech still investing big in AI development despite few breakout products.

Tech still investing big in AI development despite few breakout products

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at $2.4 billion valuation

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at .4 billion valuation

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.

Reuters

Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.

Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company’s website.

Physical Intelligence’s new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes alumni of Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.

The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. The startup spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. AGI is a term used to describe AI technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.

The news comes days after OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positions the AI startup to better compete with search engines like GoogleMicrosoft‘s Bing and Perplexity. Last month, OpenAI also closed its latest funding round at a valuation of $157 billion.

Physical Intelligence’s vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.

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Barry Diller calls timing of The Washington Post’s non-endorsement a ‘blunder’

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Barry Diller calls timing of The Washington Post's non-endorsement a 'blunder'

Watch CNBC's full interview with IAC and Expedia chairman Barry Diller

To Barry Diller, a friend of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the decision for The Washington Post not to endorse a candidate in tomorrow’s presidential election was “absolutely principled” — and poorly timed, he said Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

“They made a blunder — it should’ve happened months before, and it didn’t, and that’s the issue with it,” Diller said.

Diller is chairperson of both online travel company Expedia and IAC, which owns media platforms and websites like Dotdash Meredith and Care.com. He and Bezos appear to have been close friends for years, with Diller and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, hosting Bezos’s engagement party to fiancee Lauren Sanchez.

The decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 race or for future presidential races came directly from Bezos, the paper’s owner, according to an article published by two of the Post’s own reporters.

The move prompted public condemnation from several staff writers, a flood of at least 250,000 digital subscription cancellations and the resignations of at least three editorial board members.

Bezos defended his position in his own op-ed late last month, calling the move a “meaningful step in the right direction” to restore low public trust in media and journalism.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote, emphasizing that the decision to not endorse a candidate was made “entirely internally” and without consulting either campaign. “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it.”

Diller said he spoke to Bezos following the decision.

“I think it was absolutely principled,” Diller said. “The mistake they made — and it was a mistake admitted by him — was timing.”

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