Latest news with #immortality
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Star Trek legend William Shatner discovers powerful new way to live forever
A groundbreaking program has now made it possible to preserve your life stories and wisdom, allowing you to speak to loved ones decades into the future. StoryFile, an innovative AI company, has developed lifelike, interactive 3D avatars that allow people to 'live on' after death, sharing memories and answering questions in the same natural and conversational manner of a real person. Individuals like philanthropist Michael Staenberg, 71, and Star Trek star William Shatner, 94, have used StoryFile to immortalize both their experiences and personalities. Staenberg, a property developer and philanthropist who has given away more than $850 million, said: 'I hope to pass my knowledge on, and the good I've created.' The technology captures video interviews, transforming them into hologram-style avatars that use generative AI, similar to ChatGPT, to respond dynamically to questions. StoryFile's avatars have been employed in museums since 2021 to preserve the voices of historical figures like WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors, and by terminally ill individuals to connect with family after death. Until now, the company has offered a premium service costing tens of thousands of dollars, but a new, affordable app launching this summer will allow everyday people to record their own AI avatars for less than the cost of a monthly cellphone plan. Staenberg added that he'd like to imagine other business people and family members still having a chance to interact with him 30 years from now. 'It's important to get my version so the details aren't forgotten. I've had quite a crazy life, so I'd have a lot of stories that I don't want people to forget,' Staenberg said. More than 2,000 users have used the previous version. However, the new Storyfile app will allow users to interview themselves on video and create an intelligent avatar they can keep adding chapters to as they answer more questions about their lives. Previously, the Storyfile avatars could understand the intent of people talking to them, but could only respond with pre-recorded video answers. Storyfile's newer AI avatars will be able to generate an answer based on the persona from the recorded interviews, and it will be able to approximate an answer to any question. The company has gotten a huge number of daily queries from people who have been diagnosed with terminal illness and who hope to preserve their legacy in an avatar. Storyfile CEO Alex Quinn said: 'Every day we'll get very sad and heart-wrenching emails, saying things like "My son was just diagnosed with terminal cancer."' Others have expressed fear over their parents aging, asking for a way to keep their memories intact for the future. Quinn added that Storyfile would never be able to accommodate all those requests if they had to send their video production team to all of those customers. The solution was to make a 'DIY' version, where people record their own answers to an AI 'interviewer' using the app - answering questions on everything from their career to their family to their tastes in food. The app will come with 'permanent cold storage' so that avatars remain safe once recorded, and users can keep adding new video and new information. Quinn admitted that because Storyfile avatars use generative AI there is a possibility it could initially say 'crazy' stuff, but noted that the replica of the person will become more and more realistic the more users speak to the program. 'It's almost like an AI FaceTime where you're interviewed by an AI interviewer, and it's able to probe and go deep on certain topics,' the CEO said. 'If you've got a couple days, or you've got free time, and you want to understand your question every now and then, you're just going to keep on adding to your digital memories, and it's going to get more and more sophisticated, more and more personalized,' he continued. Tech pioneers such as inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil have already used AI to recreate lost relatives. Kurzweil created a 'dad bot' based on information about his father Fred in 2016. The 'Fredbot' could converse with Kurzweil, revealing that what his father loved about topics like gardening. It even remembered his father's belief that the meaning of life was love. 'I actually had a conversation with him, which felt a lot like talking to him,' Kurzweil told Rolling Stone Magazine in 2023. He believed that some form of his dad bot AI would be released to the public one day, enabling everyone to stay in touch with their dead relatives from beyond the grave. 'We'll be able to actually create something like a large language model that really represents somebody else by having enough information,' he predicted.
The Sun
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Haunting moment Cosby Show star Malcolm-Jamal Warner discusses his ‘immortality' & TV legacy just weeks before death
THIS is the haunting moment when Malcolm-Jamal Warner spoke about his "immortality" and TV legacy just weeks before his death. The Cosby Show star shared his reflection in a podcast appearance on Hot and Bothered with Melyssa Ford. 4 4 The 54-year-old was caught in a riptide while swimming in Costa Rica on vacation on Sunday. His cause of death was listed as asphyxia by the authorities. But just weeks earlier on the podcast, Warner discussed his life and legacy in a poignant exchange. The host noted that "life is fragile" and asked him what he hoped his legacy would be. Warner reflected: "Because I'm 54, I think about that a lot. "I remember my mother said to me one time that Mr. Cosby gave you immortality." Ford jumped in to say: "Facts. That is very true." He added: "There's that legacy there, but then because I've had this full life after that show there's another lane of legacy that I get to leave. "And I'm still working through that. Cosby Show star Malcolm-Jamal Warner dead at 54 after 'accidental drowning' "There is part of me that I will be able to leave this Earth knowing - and people knowing - that I was a good person." He added that he had been talking to his dad the previous day, who told him what made him the most proud is "that you are a good person". "That's wonderful," the host said. "But I'm a good person because my dad's a good person," Warner added. "It is possible to walk through this world - and will all of the darkness in the world - it is possible to maintain your soul and be a good person." Warner was best known for playing Theodore 'Theo' Huxtable on The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992. Beyond this, he would go on to have an illustrious career in TV and film. He is survived by a wife and a daughter, whom he has kept anonymous. In 2023, Warner told People: "I know I can speak for all the cast when I say The Cosby Show is something that we are all still very proud of. "We share a unique experience that keeps us lovingly bonded no matter how much time goes between seeing or hearing from each other." He defended the show despite it souring for many following a number of sexual assault allegations made against Cosby. Two years ago, he said: "Regardless of how some people may feel about the show now, I'm still proud of the legacy and having been a part of such an iconic show that had such a profound impact on — first and foremost, black culture — but also American culture."
New York Times
13-07-2025
- General
- New York Times
My Friends Are Immortal to Me
The deaths of three friends in the past seven months has me thinking about immortality — not Plato's view of the immortal soul, or the Bible's, but simply what lasts of our lives after we go. The lives of my friends were prominent, so one might think that their works would long outlast them. Lance Morrow, the essayist; Jules Feiffer, the cartoonist and writer; and David Childs, the architect who built One World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower), oversaw the Moynihan Train Hall extension of Penn Station in New York, 7 World Trade Center and much more. If anyone could achieve immortality on earth, these three should qualify. Yet history teaches otherwise. David Childs's masterworks could crumble to dust. The words of Jules and Lance could be forgotten in a trice. Practically no one would have heard of John Donne today had T.S. Eliot not resurrected his name. We want valued things to last, but so often they don't. The lives of my three friends, though, are vivid in my mind. I easily and gladly resurrect our conversations, the artistic and political opinions we shared, our special terms of reference, our shorthand private language. These are my souvenirs. David and I met when our families lived near each other in Washington, in the '70s. Our wives and children were friends and remain so, though distances intervened. David was especially good with our children. He taught our eldest, Carl, a trick with algebra, which Carl, now 59, remembers to this day. A major international figure in architecture, David remained quiet and modest throughout his life. Amused if annoyed by the prevailing assumption that the tallest building was the best, he spoke of installing a device in his home with a button he could push to raise the needle of Freedom Tower a few feet whenever a taller building went up, so that his would always be in first place. David died with an especially pernicious form of dementia. He could not recall building anything in his life, the cruelest way a thing can crumble. Would you like to submit a Letter to the Editor? Use the form below to share your thoughts on this or any other piece published in The New York Times in the past seven days. For your letter to be considered for publication, it should be 150 to 300 words and include your first and last names. If it is selected, an editor will contact you to review any necessary edits. Your submission must be exclusive to The New York Times. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. Click here for more information about the selection process. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Irish Times
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
How Silicon Valley became the new Tír na nÓg
What full blooded young lad wouldn't be taken with Niamh of the Golden Hair? Wasn't Oisín only human when he said yes to the beautiful daughter of Manannán Mac Lir, the God of the Sea, particularly as she came with the extra quality of being the queen of Tir na nÓg? Oisín abandoned his mates in Na Fianna and his father Finn Mac Cumhaill – the man who created the Giant's Causeway – for this red-haired stunner, heading for the Land of Eternal Youth. Three hundred years there passed like three and he returned to Ireland, feeling like a young fella, only to find that everyone was dead. When he dismounted his virile horse and touched Irish soil, he transformed into a wizened old man. These Irish legends about the futility of wanting to live forever are thought to be thousands of years old, having been passed down orally for generations before being documented in the 18th century. Obviously, the legends never made it to Silicon Valley, where a movement, based on the notion that death is optional, is sweeping through the glittering halls of the technocracy. An increasing amount of very rich men, having examined the progress of life expectancy of the past two centuries, are bewitched by the idea that we can live forever and that death is a choice more than a certainty. An entire sub-economy of vitamin pills, diets, self-help books, longevity weekends and genetic engineering initiatives have been spawned in this 21st-century version of Tir na nÓg. At the centre of this movement is the modern day Oisín - a man called Bryan Johnson . Like many evangelicals, Johnson's obsession is fascinating and risible in equal measure. His aim is to engineer immortality (or something close to it). In 2021 he publicly launched Blueprint, an obsessive anti-ageing regimen aimed at making his body function decades younger, subjecting himself to a rigorously measured lifestyle, a vegan diet, 100+ pills and supplements a day, strict sleep and exercise schedules, and constant medical tests overseen by a team of doctors. The goal is to reprogramme his body's ageing process and prove that we might be the first generation that 'don't die'. READ MORE [ A tech entrepreneur chases immortality: Bryan Johnson is 46. Soon, he plans to turn 18 Opens in new window ] Johnson is a tech entrepreneur turned longevity-evangelist whose career began in fintech. In 2007 he founded Braintree, a payment processing start-up that powered mobile transactions for online businesses. He then bought Venmo, a small peer-to-peer payments app, for about $26 million, which proved to be a steal. Venmo – not unlike Revolut - was an easy mobile money-transfer app that exploded in popularity, especially among young Americans. By 2013 its growing user base of tens of millions pushed revenue to more than $200 billion in 2021 alone, making it the talk of the digital finance world. Tech giant PayPal, Elon Musk's original company, acquired Braintree and Venmo in 2013 for $800 million. Now enormously wealthy, Johnson set about living forever. He spends a reported $2 million per year of his own money on this quest to stay youthful. The routine has earned him the nickname 'the world's most measured man'. He tracks everything in service of what he calls 'optimal longevity'. He's tried blood plasma transfusions (even using blood from his teenage son) and experimental gene therapies. According to Johnson, his biomarkers now indicate he's ageing more slowly than normal and he claims that each calendar year only ages his body about 7½ months. In recent years as the tech world became wealthier, more self-absorbed and, some might say, deluded, Johnson's pet project has morphed into a fully-fledged 'Don't Die' community. He created a Don't Die app in which users track a daily longevity score and has spawned online forums called Blueprint Discord, now numbering in the tens of thousands. He even hosts Don't Die Summits , day-long events mixing wellness with almost evangelical fervour, driven by the genetic possibility that we can slow down and reverse the DNA triggers for ageing. In early 2024 some 600 attendees paid $249–$599 each to attend a Los Angeles summit featuring biometric tests, complete with its own 'longevity amusement park' of anti-ageing tech demos (VIP tickets at $1,499 included a private dinner with Johnson). At these summits, participants rave together in the morning at 'biohacker dance parties' and test longevity gadgets, such as $500 red-light therapy masks and $125,000 hyperbaric oxygen chambers. It's all designed to build a movement around Johnson's core belief that ageing is a problem to be solved, not a fate to accept. Like any prophet, Johnson is a branding genius and his public profile has skyrocketed. Earlier this year a glossy Netflix documentary, Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, showcased his daily routine, amplifying his message. Johnson is not happening in a vacuum; he is part of a much larger economics of longevity business that is gaining momentum. Globally, anti-ageing and longevity is a multibillion-dollar industry. Anti-ageing products from supplements and skincare to wellness programmes already represent a $70+ billion market. (Colleen Rooney has just launched her own supplements range in Holland & Barrett, along with the ubiquitous Kourtney Kardashian.) The market is projected to double to $141 billion by 2034. We are getting old and will spend to stay healthy and young. There is serious money to be made. [ We hit a second adolescence in our 60s, when beauty isn't skin-deep but 'life-deep' Opens in new window ] Investors in Silicon Valley are bailing into the Don't Die movement. In the past few years longevity biotech startups have sprung up, backed by loads of loot. Tech billionaires believe we can cure ageing at the cellular level. Google's founders have backed Calico Labs (short for the California Life Company) to research life-extension. In 2022, Jeff Bezos (who else?) and other ultra-wealthy punters pitched $3 billion to launch Altos Labs, a company dedicated to cellular reprogramming therapies that hope to reverse ageing. Altos Labs has reported success extending the lifespans of mice via gene therapy. Dozens of other firms, from start-ups to Big Pharma collaborations, are working on anti-ageing drugs, gene edits, stem cell therapies and senolytics (drugs that kill off zombie ageing cells). In 2021 more than $5 billion in venture capital flowed into longevity-related companies. The sector is creating 'unicorn' valuations, For example, a company called Cambrian Bio, which develops drugs to slow age-related diseases, is valued at about $1.8 billion. It is easy to be cynical and cite the Tír na nÓg example underscoring our futile fascination with prolonging life and avoiding death; on the other hand, average life spans have extended quite dramatically over the past century. Admittedly, as we get older, living a bit longer becomes more attractive and the phrase '60 is the new 40″ doesn't seem that weird at my age. Maybe if we can't Live Forever, a tune that will be roared by 60-year-olds at the Oasis gigs in a few weeks' time, our most decorous best bet might be to grow old gracefully. Fat chance.
Gizmodo
30-06-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
This Survey Asked Neuroscientists If Memories Can Be Extracted From the Dead. Here's What They Said
The allure and terror of transferring your consciousness to a computer has long been fodder for cyberpunk novels and billionaire-backed immortality startups. But a substantial chunk of neuroscientists think it might be possible to extract memories from a preserved brain and store those memories inside a computer, according to a new study. The study, published in the journal PLOS One, suggests that most neuroscientists believe that memory has a physical basis and, on average, give a 40% probability that we might one day be able to emulate a human brain. But there was little consensus as to what exactly that physical basis is, highlighting just how little we know about what memories are made of. The authors surveyed 312 neuroscientists—both memory experts and general neuroscientists—to get their thoughts on the feasibility of preserving a human brain and later extracting its memories. It was led by Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, a neuroscientist at Monash University in Australia and the author of The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death. While the researchers wrote that the questions of memory extraction from preserved brains are 'strange and speculative,' they provide insight into how neuroscientists think about memory formation. Results of the survey show that neuroscientists largely agree that memories have a physical substrate rather than relying on a dynamic process that ceases at preservation; they're likely stored in the synaptic connections between neurons, which strengthen and weaken with experience. The survey showed that 70% of neuroscientists agree that a physical, molecular record of a memory exists—stored in stable changes to neural connectivity and interactions between proteins and other cellular components—of which you could theoretically take a snapshot. However, 'there was no clear consensus on exactly which neurophysiological feature or scale is critical for memory storage,' the authors wrote in the study. The surveyed scientists didn't agree on what resolution—from the atomic-level composition of biomolecules to nanometer-level resolution of subcellular structures—would be required to extract a memory from a preserved brain. This is largely due to the fact that, while most neuroscientists agree that memory has a physical basis, it's still up for debate exactly what that basis is. The survey also asked whether existing tools could theoretically preserve the structure of a brain well enough to extract memories. Preserving a brain in such a way that the proteins and cells remain intact is tricky, since freezing can damage neural tissue. But one way neuroscientists could do this is through aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, a technique that combines chemical fixation with vitrification—the process of turning a substance into a glass-like solid by cooling it down rapidly. The study asked neuroscientists to assign a probability that memories could be extracted from a cryopreserved brain. The participants gave a wide range of estimates, but the median answer was around a 40% probability. The authors asked the neuroscientists how probable it might be to emulate a whole brain—like, uploading and digitizing a person's brain onto a computer—from preserved neural tissue. That could open up the possibility of uploading your full self and consciousness into a machine. In this case, the median answer was again around 40%, though the authors note that the responses again varied widely. 'Admittedly, that's not 100 percent,' Zeleznikow-Johnston told IFLScience. 'That means that there's not full consensus in the community that yeah, definitely this will work, but it's not 0.1 percent, or 0.01 percent. That's a substantial chunk of neuroscientists who think there's a very real chance that it will work, and my guess is that actually that number will creep up over time as we get better at doing these brain implants, emulations, all these other things.' Neuroscientists believe we're still a long way off from being able to emulate an entire human brain, according to the study. When asked when we might be able to emulate a human brain, the respondents gave a median answer of 2125. Still, it's something to think about.
