How to End Human Stupidity.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Q&A - Interview

Jose Luis Cordeiro is a founding faculty member at Singularity University, a Silicon Valley-based futurist think tank devoted to the idea that science may soon allow humans to transcend aging and death. At this year's Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, Cordeiro sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss immortality, artificial intelligence, and why he's so optimistic.

Q: What are you most excited about right now?

A: Medicine is being radically transformed. We are going to be living longer lives, healthier lives, probably indefinite life spans, very soon.

Q: Define very soon.

A: At the latest by 2045. I do not plan to die. Even more interesting, in 30 years, I will be younger than today, not older.

Q: How?

A: Because we are going to have rejuvenation techniques, and these experiments are beginning right now.

Q: What are some of those treatments, and how do we know that they'll work, either immediately or in the long term?

A: Well, one of the things being experimented with is increasing the telomeres at the end of the chromosomes [which protect our genes from degrading]. Actually, this is what cancer does--cancer cells are biologically immortal. They do not age. So scientists are trying to understand [how to] apply that to the rest of the body. There is already one human patient that has undergone this kind of treatment for over one year, and her ceils are becoming younger, according to the length of the telomeres. They are regrowing, they are becoming longer.

Q: What are the regulatory angles that affect this kind of advancement?

A: This experimental treatment cannot be done in the USA right now. It is illegal. In order to do an experimental treatment, even on yourself, with your own money, you need approvals. So the person that is undergoing this treatment, she actually had to fly to South

America. In the USA, the medical industry is highly regulated, and that is a tragedy.

Q: The singularity is where a network of machines that have human minds starts multiplying exponentially, and change becomes almost instantaneous and in a positive direction. Do you worry at all about negative consequences?

A: I am very...