Can AI Help Us Live Longer?

OpenAI is working with a biotech startup to develop an AI model with the purpose of engineering stem cells. The goal is to effectively step back natural age at the molecular level to help us live longer. Replacing some of the body’s naturally failing cells associated with normal aging could delay the loss the functional efficiency, which leads to the cells making errors, which in turn lead to loss of health.

While the role of AI in science and medicine is not new, this method of applying research datasets toward “programming” biochemistry is. The field of research devoted to extending the duration of life is longevity science and focuses on therapeutic technologies intended to alter to the body in ways that allow it to reassume function closer to its original (more youthful) performance. 

In 2023, a human without major health issues can expect to live 85 years or more (compare age expectancy in 1900 — 32 years). Still, some 40 million people age 65+ will succumb to age-related diseases annually. Together with those who develop diseases commonly attributed to aging, average life expectancy on a global scale in 2021 was 71, with Covid’s influence, averaging out to 75 since.

How?

This research project’s goal is to reprogram a particular set of proteins called Yamanaka factors. Yamanaka factors are proteins that can build stem cells from skin cells and stem cells, you will recall, are the ones with superpowers allowing them to generate any tissue in the body.

Replacing some of a body’s original skin cells with with what would be, effectively, fresh new super powered cells could alleviate, at least partly, the wear of aging. At their healthiest, cells with less “mileage” make fewer errors than older cells do (such errors are a big source of a lot of our problems).Replacing older cells with stem cells could helps us avoid the failures of breakdown in organ function and overall physicality so common to aging; this natural process is known as homeostatic failure, and is a common state of the body’s declining efficiency. 

Homeostatic failure usually happens in a cascading decline, a domino effect of the body’s loss of ability to do its work of living. This failure can occur all at once or piecemeal, a system at a time, over years, resulting in an ultimately mortal total collapse.

The new research aims to eliminate one of the mechanisms of this “death cascade.”

Impact to death care?

Extrapolating a bit, chances are that this therapeutic intervention, should it be successful, would be expensive once it’s publicly available. It also seems likely to become the sort of thing to catch on as a type of “youth elixir” that could at first have limited access but could turn into the next big thing. Would this mean an increase in “younger elderly” clients? If, eventually, this type of intervention becomes widely available (and affordable), could processing such older clients result in new challenges to death care? 

Even if a body is basically staying younger at the level of its very cells, presumably replacement with new parts cannot continue indefinitely; eventually even it will achieve the same end we all must. 

But one wonders whether such a trend might translate to preservation of key systems… the efficiency of the circulatory system, affecting embalming, for example, or other unforeseen effects; perhaps, say, strengthening bones to reduce fragility of remains.

Optimistically — if we can apply that word in this context — it almost seems possible that living longer, ironically, might make the work of death easier on the living.

You’re a funeral home or cemetery owner/operator and you are in the final stages of planning that 2025 business budget.  If you have loans for livery vehicles or building improvements that are either adjustable or coming due in 2025 what can you reasonably expect for interest rates on those loans going forward?

As of today when I write this article the Federal Funds Rate, the rate banks borrow money from the federal government at and banks use as a base when working on their interest rate margins, sits at the 4.50-4.75% rate.  That rate is down from a 5.25-5.50% rate earlier in 2024.

Part of the reason that rate is down is that those who fix the Federal Funds Rate have had the mindset that inflation is coming under control.  However, just last week one of those policy makers who help set the Federal Funds Rate, Michelle Bowman, questioned if inflation is under control and made the point in this article from Reuters that interest rates may be higher for longer.

To that end, Bowman made this statement in that article, “I would prefer to proceed cautiously in bringing the policy rate down to better assess how far we are from the end point, while recognizing that we have not yet achieved our inflation goal and closely watching the evolution of the labor market.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Bowman also made this point which infers that, all things being equal, interest rates may continue to be higher.  Here’s what the article said about that inference, “. . .she believes the neutral policy rate – the level of borrowing costs that neither bolsters nor brakes economic growth – is much higher that it was before the COVID pandemic, “and therefore we may be closer to a neutral policy stance than we currently think.”

So, at least from this article I think that it would be wise to budget for levels of our current rates for 2025.  If one budgets for that amount they will probably be safe on the high side for 2025.  And, if the rates do tick down, you then have some extra money in the bank.

When I did my budgeting on interest, and other items, I always preferred to over-budget rather than under-budget.  That way, if I was wrong, it was to my favor and I saved some from my budget numbers rather than being wrong on the other side and having to figure out how to plug the budget hole.

Prime Rate — The Prime Rate as published by the Wall Street Journal sits at 7.75% today.  By definition the Prime Rate is the rate that financial institutions will give their most creditworthy customers at any given time.  Prime Rate is not a national rate and will vary from bank to bank.

Here’s a historical chart of the JP Morgan Prime Rate from 1983 until today.  Their Prime Rate sits at 7.75% today but was as low as 3.25% in March 2020 before the Federal Funds Rates were raised to try to put a stop to inflationary costs.

Related Information —  Sometimes it is interesting to look at what public companies are paying for credit and at least use that as a relative data point when searching out your own credit terms.  While there are no two borrowing situations exactly alike, such as some with physical collateral and some offering no collateral and differing maturity lengths of the debt, the rates and terms given are great points to know when talking with your local banker.  In September both Service Corporation International and Matthews International closed new debt offerings.  You can read about those from company press releases here:

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