The aspiration to "cure" death and live forever is the new trend that is all the rage among Silicon Valley tycoons, from Peter Thiel to Jeff Bezos.
«Our mission is to increase the span of healthy human life by ten years. This will be extremely challenging and require substantial resources. We are fortunate to have received seed funding in the amount of $180 million, which will lead us to our first proof of concept and the safe operation of the company throughout the decade».
Retro Biosciences is a young startup, officially born a year ago, thanks to the money of a financier who has remained unknown until now. Now his name has been made public, arousing curiosity. It is in fact Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.
From OpenAI to research on immortality
The thirty-seven-year-old, who founded the artificial intelligence research non-profit together with Elon Musk in 2015, has been on the crest of the wave since last November after the launch of ChatGPT. Sam Altman has, according to a long report by MIT Technology Review, invested $180 million out of pocket in the startup Retro Biosciences.
Altman would also be the only investor in this mysterious startup, the latest in a long list of companies that aim to counteract aging and prolong life.
Everything comes from parabiosis
Altman’s interest in longevity originated eight years ago, when he came across research on parabiosis.
The "heterochronic parabiosis" (from the Greek "para", together, and "bios", life) consists in uniting the circulatory systems of two genetically identical animals, but of different ages, so that they share the same blood source; according to laboratory results, this technique would seem to reverse the effects of aging.
At the time, he was the head of Y Combinator and tasked his staff with looking into the progress anti-aging scientists had made on mice.
Until now, Altman’s involvement in the company had been kept confidential. This was a decision made by the CEO of the company, Joe Betts-LaCroix, who wanted to let Retro fend for itself, without focusing attention on its sole investor, whose notoriety could have turned out to be a distraction by the goals pursued by the startup.
“The most important thing about Retro is that it’s a really good biotech startup, which is rare." – said Altman – "It is combining the great science and resources of a large company with the spirit of a hardworking startup. And this is the right project for our time".
The new fad among Silicon Valley moguls
The myth of immortality, in recent years, has appeared less and less mythical and more and more real. It attracted the attention of the richest people on the planet who have invested millions to defeat or at least curb aging, resurrecting the dead (cryonics) and "downloading" the mind (mind uploading).
At the head of this new trend that combines millionaire investments and preometic ambitions, it is precisely the magnates of Silicon Valley. To condense their goals we thought Peter Thiel, who in a 2012 interview with Business Insider, explained that
"Everyone says that death is natural, that it is part of life, but I think that nothing could be further from the truth. Death is simply a problem. That needs to be resolved".
A "cure" for death
The aspiration is to “cure” death and live forever.
The dream, shared by many, of being able to defeat death has produced the image of a world in which human beings can extend the duration of life indefinitely. An extension freed from the risk of old age, thanks to genetic engineering and new biomedical techniques.
The projects in this field are divided between the more ambitious ones and those conceptually more modest and in part acceptable, aimed at slowing down the aging process with the aim of reducing the incidence of diseases and, through the study of epigenetics, reprogramming cells.
In line with the transhumanist creed, the task of Man is, according to Thiel, to fight death. Empowering human beings and healing Nature’s imperfections. This is the Valley’s conception of death: an ideology that drives billionaires of the caliber of Peter Thiel, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Bryan Johnson, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos to invest in immortality research.
The transhumanism, in fact, is a technological form of utopian socialism which not only professes the demolition of all limits and the empowerment of Man, but envisages a future without disease and without death, outlines a society without work, which will be fully automated. It sells the illusion of being able to enjoy a full life, full of pleasure, without limits, without working, without growing old, without dying.
One of the many dreams of the Silicon Valley. Where even immortality is a business.
Original article published on Money.it Italy 2023-03-13 10:00:00. Original title: Sam Altman, CEO di OpenAI, investe 180 milioni di dollari nella ricerca sulla longevità
