Foreword

How we see growing older and living longer has been evolving over the last 100 years, as life expectancy has increased and more people live into old age. After reading this tour d'horizon by Tina you will realize that it may be about to change even more.

Just as advances in anatomy, anesthetics, and antiseptics left the barber-surgeon confined to the past, the new tools of genomics, epigenetics, and artificial intelligence will leave parts of our current approach to healthcare behind. That has exciting possibilities for making life longer and healthier.

The potential scope for AI to support this through taking charge of our health, work, and finances is astonishing, albeit at times possessing aspects of science fiction.

That's urgently needed because as more people live into old age and the disease burden shifts to age-related illnesses, the value of aging better increases. Further, the better we get at aging the more valuable further improvements will become. If we can empower ourselves with knowledge and work towards sharing the benefits of longevity, we can move away from negative views of an “aging society" and think about a "longevity dividend."

As each chapter in this book reveals more instances of breath-taking new possibilities, you will get a sense of the potential magnitude for change—for you and society.

You will also be aware of the challenges these developments bring, not just to medicine but to fundamental issues about our identity and how we live our lives. However, you will also be aware of something else—a thread that weaves its way throughout the book. That is a sense of optimism.

It's easy to (rightly) fear a world where doctors are replaced by robots, or our genetic secrets and bodily condition is no longer hidden but out in the open for us and even others to see. When we're sick we're frightened, and we want something comforting that we can cling to—something personal and human to connect to. An AI process that treats our bodies' biological secrets as just a decoded algorithm is far from that.

The famous medic Sir William Osler once remarked, "The good physician treats the disease, the great physician treats the patient who has the disease." While written over a 100 years ago, Osler's insight runs through these pages. The focus of the developments Tina outlines is on improving the life of the individual—each and every one of us. As AI makes machines ever smarter at being machines, we need to make sure that we utilize that as an opportunity to make us smarter at being humans.

That's why it's so refreshing to read in these pages not just about brilliant people pushing back scientific frontiers but also a focus on what is needed to make this work for us as humans. In other words, truly goal-driven AI. And what a goal! The goal of all these committed researchers is to give you more healthy years to your life. Not in a magic bullet, or a single treatment, and certainly not without your help and your contribution, but that's the aim—to get older, better; to live longer with AI.

With this book, Tina's ready to show you how.

Andrew Scott

Professor of Economics, London Business School

Co-Author, The 100-Year Life and The New Long Life