All language subtitles for VICE S05E11

Human life expectancy

has been growing steadily
for over 100 years.

At the beginning
of the 20th century,

on average, people
lived for 47 years,

today, it's 79.

And it's believed
that the first person

to live to 150
has already been born.

So, we sent Isobel Yeung to learn about
advances in science and medicine

that are poised to radically expand
our life expectancy even further.

In southern Japan,
living a long life

is one of the greatest human achievements.

We're just driving
through the streets of Okinawa,

joining a Kajimaya celebration,
which is this lady-- Hi!

This lady turning 97.

Okinawa actually has one of the
oldest populations in the world.

When someone turns 97,
it's a sort of a turning point,

when you return
to your innocence,

and everyone seems
to be really happy.

So many Okinawans
live past 100,

that the entire island chain is known
as a "blue zone."

Meaning, it's a
longevity hot spot,

where the rate
of centenarians per capita

is among the highest on Earth.

Aw, that's so cool!

God, there's so many
old people in this town.

Everyone's just trying
to get a glimpse of her,

congratulate her,
get to shake hands with her.

She's like a little local celeb.

What's your secret?

Okinawans
have far lower rates

of cancer, heart disease
and dementia than Americans,

and the reasons why
are no longer a mystery.

For over 40 years,
Dr. Makoto Suzuki

has been chronicling the details

of the oldest lives in Okinawa.

These are all your studies?
Yeah.

Wow.

This guy looks pretty happy and healthy.

Just 100.

How old is this person?

Gosh, she looks amazing.
Yeah.

Who is the oldest person
you've studied? Uh...

111?
Mmm.

Why is Okinawa unique
in terms of its longevity?

This Okinawan study
is part of an emerging field

of longevity research
taking place worldwide

in the hopes of unlocking the biological
mysteries of the longest lived.

One of the most renowned is the
Institute for Aging Research

at the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine,

directed by
Dr. Nir Barzilai.

So, how do you plan to allow people
to live a long and healthy life?

We have over 50 labs

that are looking at
the biology of aging

from several perspectives,

and we're trying
to coordinate the efforts,

that can allow us
to target the aging process

and, kind of, slow it
as much as we can.

In this lab,
they're focusing on

how can we turn old cells

into younger, functional cells.

Besides cells,
Barzilai and his team

are looking at ways
to hack our metabolisms

and even DNA,

in order to fend off
age-related illnesses.

They've even begun preparing for the
first-ever human clinical trial

of a drug that they believe
will slow the aging process.

Metformin is approved by
the FDA for treatment of diabetes.

Why Metformin?

Because people with diabetes
who take Metformin

have much less
cardiovascular disease,

much less cancers,

much less cognitive decline,

and significantly less mortality
than people without diabetes.

Metformin has
effects on processes like

inflammation,

cellular survival,

stress defense.

What we're predicting,
we'll delay variety of diseases

including mortality,
cardiovascular disease,

Alzheimer's, cancer by
about 30% in this study,

the way we planned it.

Wow.

That's huge.

If Dr. Barzilai's
estimates are correct,

average life spans could
jump by up to 25 years,

but while Metformin goes through the
expensive FDA approval process,

dozens of age-defying products
are already being sold.

None of these are
defined as medicine,

which enables them to skirt
the FDA's requirements.

In that gray area,
between being medicinal or not,

are stem cell clinics.

Hi Isobel!

Pleased to meet you.
I'm Dr. Halland.

Welcome to the clinic.

I'll be with you
in just a moment.

Thanks!

Stem cell treatments
employ a controversial form

of body hacking that many think
can help you stay forever young.

Small little pinch, okay?

We do regenerative
medicine here.

We help people feel better by using
the body's own healing abilities.

Dr. Chen is
harvesting this woman's fat

so he can collect the mysenchymal
stem cells inside it.

The basic building block
of our body are stem cells.

As we get older, the amount of viable
and healthy stem cells is less.

We can now cell-shock cells,

and so these stem cells actually
wake up to repair the body.

The fat solution is
then shaken up like a martini

to prepare the stem cells,

or as Dr. Chen calls them,

medicinal signaling cells
for activation.

I think this is phenomenal.

I'm very optimistic.

This woman is receiving
stem cell treatment

in her knees,
which are arthritic.

What stem cells do is they basically
recruit other cells into the area.

It's almost like
leaving a honing signal.

So, now the body says,

"Hey! Oh, I'm injured. I
actually should start healing."

Any better?

Look at you go!

The FDA has only approved
a few stem cell treatments

because of the limited
clinical trial data.

But Dr. Chen believes that stem cells
not only have orthopedic benefits,

they also may extend our lives,

and he's not just selling
the idea, he's living it.

So, right now,
I'm having my blood taken.

That will then get
processed in a centrifuge,

and then we're gonna
connect it into the IV.

For me, it's for
systemic health.

I feel like if you're constantly
in a state of healing,

the likelihood of getting
sick is extremely low.

I mean, I don't
really get sick at all.

- What we're producing is platelet-rich
plasma... - Mm-hmm.

...and that's pretty
commonly known as PRP.

All the regenerative
elements are in there.

Okay, so what's
gonna happen here?

He's going to just connect
me to the NAD solution,

replenishing the
mitochondria function.

And you do
that simultaneously

whilst you're putting
the plasma back into you?

- Correct, plus the laser.
- Okay.

I'm putting a fiber-optic
cable in my vein.

So, as my heart pumps the cells into the
blood, it passes through the laser,

picking up energy,
its photo-chemistry.

How long do you think
you're gonna live for?

I mean, I'm happy with 100.

More than 500 of
these boutique-size clinics

are currently operating in the US, without
the need for government approval.

But dwarfing these businesses
are the longevity ventures

being formed by today's
wealthiest tech entrepreneurs,

who are pouring hundreds
of millions of dollars

into disrupting
human life itself.

We don't have to die
a physical death.

Our consciousness can continue
for a longer period of time.

Perpetual life, that's
what we believe in.

One of the largest
is run by Craig Venter,

who lists mapping
the first human genome,

and creating the first
forms of synthetic life

as just some
of his achievements.

He's now cofounded
the company Human Longevity.

I hear that you're known as the
Steve Jobs of the biotech world.

That's a good positive one,
so I like that one.

I describe it, I'm sort of the
orchestra conductor, you know.

So, I have close to 600 scientists here
in the three different organizations.

And in the biotech world, there's a
lot of researchers and scientists

but you're an
entrepreneur, essentially.

I think to be a good scientist today,
you have to be entrepreneurial.

Especially in this field...

where it costs so much.

Venter has led multiple
biotech firms and foundations

dedicated to the human genome,

including Synthetic Genomics,

and the J. Craig
Venter Institute.

But at Human Longevity,
you can use all that research

to map your own genome...

Good morning!
Good morning.

...for the bargain price
of $25,000.

Access granted.

Instead of simply getting your
blood, and your temperature taken,

HLI's testing takes all day.

This is an electronic floor.

It has thousands of censors,

and this is gonna analyze
your movement, and your gait.

So, I want you to count
out loud, backwards,

by three's, and I want
you to start at 200.

200, 197...

194, 185...

182.

Finger tapping test.

The objective is to tap
a key as quickly as possible.

We actually need
to collect a stool sample.

And you'll just slide
the sample across,

rather than pushing it through...
Okay.

...just slide it across.

We're used to thinking
of ourselves as intact.

- So, it's a very different view
of ourselves. - Mm-hmm.

Three, two, and one, holding.

When we sequence your genome,

we'll find around 8,000
extremely rare variants,

and those are the things
more likely to be linked

to unique traits
or even diseases.

And what proportion of people

who have been through the program
have something wrong with them?

We find in about
40 percent of people

serious, potentially
life-threatening medical issues.

If you saw bright
spots pop up in these darker regions,

then we would know
that there's a problem there.

Okay, but these are
all normal-looking.

No? Don't scare me! Don't do that! I don't mean
to scare you. I just-- you know, I'm not--

I'm not to interpret these,
that's for the radiologist.

A few weeks later,
you're given a prognosis

for not just your
present state of health,

but your future as well.

This is the big day when
you get all your results back.

I know, I'm a little bit
nervous to be honest.

We made an avatar of you

with our multiple camera system.
Awesome.

So, overall it's good news.

We didn't find
anything truly wrong.

Now, we only found hints
of early disease.

Slightly higher
than normal liver fat,

insulin sensitivity,

and a slight tendency for
metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

Does that mean this
should act as a warning

in terms of my lifestyle?
Absolutely.

You have control,
and that's what most people

don't realize
this data gives you.

While the data slapped me with
some long-term issues to mull over,

the real breakthrough here,
is that it can be used

to specifically isolate
and discover deadly diseases,

which drastically lower humanity's
average life expectancy.

With cancer, we've been finding
that at stage zero, stage one,

and early stage two,
where it's completely treatable.

We've found several people that
have episodic atrial fibrillation,

that is one of the major
causes of stroke.

Just putting them
on anticoagulants

can be lifesaving in that case.

We need to have interventions
to overcome defects

in our genetic code
that could lead to early death.

But beyond early
detection is a bigger goal.

Venter is coupling the data collected
from Health Nucleus participants

with tens of thousands
of sequenced genomes

to create the first predictive
model of health analysis.

Why is data the answer here?

The complexity
of the genome,

6.4 billion letters
of genetic code,

is enough on its own that you
need a lot of data to analyze it.

So, we use massive computing,

but we also use
machine learning,

where tools in the computer

can look at data and learn
faster than us mere mortals can.

We're starting to understand
the patterns in the code.

Everyday, our system gets more
and more and more powerful.

I think we're
at the tipping point.

Aging can be manipulated.

It's science now,
not science fiction.

Does the answer
to longer life live within us?

I think so.
I think there's

a lot of things that we haven't
unlocked in human physiology.

The next thing is
how do you activate it.

We're learning things faster

than we've ever learned
in the history of science now.

Anybody that's born
in this next decade,

has a greatly increased chance
of living into triple digits.

Where do you think
this is all going?

I think in two
to 300 hundred years,

there'll be extensive editing
of every human genome,

everything will be based
on genetic predictions,

making people stronger, smarter,

and healthier and living longer.

The world spent more than $71
billion on robotics in 2015,

and the market
for intelligent machines

is expected to more
than triple by 2020.

Now, robots can already
perform complex human tasks,

but as Hamilton Morris
discovered,

their real value may lie in whether
they can become smart enough

to actually think on their own.

I'm at IREX,

the world's largest robotics
convention in Tokyo, Japan,

riding on this robotic unicycle
through the exhibitions,

which showcase every
imaginable variety of robot.

There are robotic snakes
for looking through drains.

There's rescue robots,

climbing robots,

breast examination robots.

This body armor
connects me to the robot

which mirrors all the movements.

I put my hand in
the robot's hand,

and then held my own hand,

using my hand
to control the robot.

Definitely has an uncanny
valley effect where it's

just human-like enough

and almost repulsive in a way.

Some of the
most popular robots

were human-like machines built for
dangerous tasks in disaster recovery.

Though impressive,
it was surprising how slow

and limited these robots
were at moving like humans.

I visited a robotics lab
in Tokyo

to talk to Shigeo Hirose,

a pioneer in robotics technology,
about why that's the case.

Why is that this
mechanical innovation moves slowly

relative to the innovation
in software and electronics?

Essentially, for robots
to become more functional,

they need bigger brains,
not better mechanics,

and the key to unlocking
that brain power

is developing artificial
intelligence, or AI.

Even the tech giant Google is said
to be moving away from the physical

and doubling down on AI.

AI is the science of programming
computers to perceive their environment

and make rational, cognitive decisions
in order to achieve a goal,

and it's one of the most
rapidly progressing

and sought after
technologies in the world.

At Harvard's Center
for Brain Science,

Dr. David Cox is hoping
to model AI

off real biological functions

by mapping the
brains of animals.

A major drive of the
experiments we're doing

is to understand
how brains learn,

and if we understand
how brains learn,

we need to have
the brains be learning.

And we have rooms full
of these kinds of racks,

and basically what this is, it's
like a video arcade for rats,

and if you look inside,

you can see there are different
little ports that they can lick.

Basically, those are the buttons on
the game controller for the rats

and there's a monitor
in the back of the rig,

and we can train the rats to
distinguish between different things.

Once the rats are trained,

Dr. Cox observes
the neuronal activity

inside the rats' brains
while they're thinking.

We've injected a virus
into their brain

that carries a genetically
engineered protein,

which lights up
a little bit brighter

when we shine a laser on it
when the cell is active.

So, this is a way that we can
actually watch the animal think.

The most
intelligent rats' brains

are divided into slices thousands
of times thinner than a human hair,

and then imaged through
a powerful electron microscope,

and then modeled in 3-D space.

So, what we're doing
is we're marrying behavior,

what the animal can do,
its actual...

its learning,
and how its improving

with the activity
of those neurons,

and then marrying that
with their neuroanatomy.

And from all of this
massive amount of data,

we're gonna try
and really understand

what kinds of algorithms might these
neuronal systems be computing.

What allows biological systems
to do all of these things

that we haven't yet figured out how
to make artificial systems do.

That's gonna unlock
a huge renaissance

in practical robotics,
practical machine learning,

computer vision,
things like that.

One of the major milestones
in creating human-level intelligence,

is for machines
to attain self-awareness.

Columbia University's Creative
Machines Lab may have already done it.

When you look at this robot,
you can see it has four legs,

but the robot itself does not
know that it has four legs.

All it knows is that it has a couple
of motors, a couple of sensors.

So, if self-awareness works,

this machine should
gradually learn what it is.

As the robot comes to
life, and takes its first steps,

it tries to understand
what it is.

We turn it on, and we
can watch what it thinks it is.

We can actually
look at its memory,

and understand how
it's modeling itself.

Does it recognize that it
has four tentacles or eight joints?

In the beginning,
it's completely wrong,

but the robot very quickly
knows that they're wrong,

and it basically
hones its self-image

to a point where it
pretty much matches

its experiences in reality.

Using that self-image,
it can learn how to walk

by playing out lots of forms
of locomotion in its mind.

These robots learn over time

to simulate themselves

in a future situation they
haven't actually experienced.

In other words, they don't
have to learn by doing,

they can learn by thinking.

If these robots
are in the infancy of AI,

their counterparts
at UC Berkeley

are going to kindergarten.

I'm in the arms of BRETT,

the Berkeley Robot for the
Elimination of Tedious Tasks.

Using trial and error,

BRETT learns how
to fold laundry,

assemble LEGO blocks

and fit pegs into holes.

It goes from scratch.

It has no notion
of how its arms move,

no notion of anything
except for, like, a goal,

and it does some
random set of actions,

and depending on whether
its doing good or bad,

it evaluates that and
keeps updating its policy

to do better and
better and better.

And like a child, BRETT
can watch someone perform a task,

like tying a knot,
and actually learn it.

Now it has to use
both its hands.

There we go.

So, that's how it's
supposed to work, yeah.

To make robots
like BRETT even smarter,

some AI developers
are using gaming principles

to teach their AIs
to strategize.

In 2014, Google reportedly
spent more than $500 million

to acquire DeepMind,

one of the world's
leading AI developers,

led by gaming prodigy

Demis Hassabis.

What is the significance of
games in this sort of research?

Games were invented to be a kind
of microcosm of aspects of life.

They're, um, a very
efficient platform

to sort of develop
AI algorithms and test them.

They can have some of
the richness of the real world,

but they are in
more constrained ways.

Advancements in computer science
have been tested with games before,

like super-computer
Deep Blue's stunning defeat

of world chess champion,
Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Whoa! Kasparov has resigned.

That was something
well beyond my understanding.

Now DeepMind
has set out to beat

the most complex
board game in the world.

The ancient Chinese game of GO.

Can you talk a little bit about what makes
this a big deal, why it's important.

There's more possible board positions in
GO than there are atoms in the universe.

If you ask a great GO player,

why they made a particular move,

they'll often answer
that it just felt right.

That's quite different to when
you ask a great chess player,

they'll usually be able to tell you
precisely the calculations they made.

GO's a lot more about feel.

These great GO players use all
of their years of experience

to just sort of come up with the
right pattern-matching move

that fits for that position.

In other words, it was
believed you need human intuition,

or else you can't win.

No AI program has ever defeated
a GO world champion before.

To see if DeepMind successfully
built artificial human intuition,

we traveled to South Korea, where
Google organized a GO tournament

with a one-million
dollar prize,

pitting one of the world's
top human players

against AlphaGo.

That was Lee Sedol, who is the
current GO champion walking by.

This is the final game
of the GO championship.

This may be the biggest board
game competition in history,

because this is a human champion

versus the most
sophisticated computer-based

GO playing system
that has ever been created.

Lee Sedol has about ten
minutes left on the clock.

The game is slowly
nearing its end.

I wonder if we have
a resignation here?

It could be
that Lee Sedol's resigned.

Yeah. I'm getting
word Lee has resigned.

Wow.

It's over.
Lee Sedol has lost.

AlphaGo won four
out of five games.

It is the champion GO player.

AlphaGo's big win
reinforced the idea

that we may be on the brink of
transformative artificial intelligence,

but some of the world's
most renowned thinkers

are warning that there's a high
risk of unintended consequences.

The development of full
artificial intelligence

could spell the end
of the human race.

With artificial intelligence,
we are summoning the demon.

He's the guy with the pentagram
and the holy water,

and he's like, "Yeah, you sure
you can control the demon?"

I don't think it's inherent

that as we create
super intelligence,

that it will,
necessarily, always have

the same goals
in mind that we do.

Oxford philosopher
Nick Bostrom,

believes that the benefits
of super intelligence

must be reconciled
with these risks.

Think of all the things that...

the human species might have been able
to achieve in the fullness of time.

Maybe you would
have a cure for aging.

Maybe you would
have space colonization,

all these kinds of
science fiction-like things,

but all of those
things, I think,

might happen very quickly
done on digital timescales.

In the long-term, I think
we have an additional

and very different and
distinct and unique problem.

Which is, how could you ensure
that this super-intelligent system

will actually do what
you intended for it to do?

How could you control an intelligence
vastly greater than your own?

There's always this concern

of some kind of telescoping,
singularity situation

where a sufficiently
intelligent computer

is able to build more
intelligent computers,

which leads to some
kind of spiraling effect.

I think if you ask most
AI researchers or experts,

they'll probably give you
the same answer:

that a lot of these more science fiction
scenarios are just that, science fiction.

Most technologies, they're
kind of inherently neutral,

but it depends on how society
uses them and deploys them

that ends up determining whether they
end up being for good or for bad.

As researchers
work to balance

AI's risks and possibilities,

much of the science fiction of the
past is becoming today's reality,

and the world's of artificial
intelligence and robotics

are on track to achieve breakthroughs
in technology and science,

that have never been
possible for humans before.

What I think is
the most important thing is

to use AI to advance
science and medicine.

Things like diseases,

climate, even things like
particle physics, macroeconomics.

These are all hugely complex systems
now that we're trying to deal with

and we're trying to get
an understanding of.

I kind of dream about the day
when AI's good enough

that we can have this idea
of AI scientists that work,

hand-in-hand,
with human experts

to allow us to make
breakthroughs

much faster than we're able
to at the moment.

And do you think
that will happen soon?

I think that could happen in
the next 20 years. Yeah, sure.