Why would billionaires end world hunger when they can buy the fountain of youth?

Trying to explain AI to me is like trying to explain God to a horse. Words will be spoken and there might appear what seems, on the surface, some signals of sentience. But ultimately, I just want to eat something and jump over a hedge.

However, that doesn’t stop a desire to learn and understand. Not just to understand what it is, but, more broadly, why so many of the richest, most influential people in the world are losing their minds and betting the house on it. It can’t all be because they want to create a script for a fictionalised Willy Wonka event in Glasgow (still, to date, the most amusing and ill-delivered use of AI).

Just over a week ago, Elon Musk offered around $100bn (£80bn) to buy OpenAI. Even in the rarified world of tech bros that feels chunky. Was the offer made to annoy Sam Altman, his former ally and co-founder of OpenAI?

Altman, it is said, is keen to work a deal that would see him buy the for-profit part of the company for around $40bn. Obviously, trying to work out the reasoning behind any of Musk’s capricious decisions is a modern Gordian Knot. Still, it’s all part of the AI conundrum. 

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Just a few weeks before the purchase offer, a report had been published outlining the growing success of OpenAI in longevity research. A new AI model had managed to vastly accelerate cell regeneration. There is more to it than this, involving new approaches to the Yamanaka factors, but as I’m going through the gears here like a veritable John von Neumann, we don’t have to dwell on this.

In essence, this science is leaping ahead with de-ageing. Not in the way of Bryan Johnson, the obscenely wealthy man spending $2m a year to de-age and potentially live forever – why Bryan, why so much effort for vanity – but in ways that can help millions of people. It is looking at how cells can replicate, potentially adding 10 years to the average human life, and also how this could help in organ replacement.

The market in longevity is expected to reach $4.1bn by 2031. The OpenAI cell regeneration research is being conducted in tandem with a company called Retro Biosciences. A couple of years ago Sam Altman invested $180m into Retro Biosciences.

This, and Musk’s intervention, leads to some wider questions about intention. There are clear positive boosts for society, but ultimately, somebody is going to control the technologies. As fewer and fewer of the superwealthy control so much, it means, globally, their power expands.

Is that the endgame for them? Absolute power? Where does that leave the rest of us? Or are they, living so far from any day-to-day reality, trying to spend as much as they can so THEY can live for a very, very, very long time. Like contemporary cryogenics.

The other question is about how a lot of that wealth could otherwise be pointed. A few years ago, research by the German government estimated it would take $330bn to end world hunger. Regardless of this feeling like a reductive number without exact reasoning, even within a few billion of it, if Musk gave that away, he’d still have $50bn or so to build his big rockets or taunt his mates with hostile takeover attempts.

It feels like we’re at a hinge moment. Technologies are on the cusp of remarkable positive change for humanity. But we just don’t know the real cost. 

So, after sorting AI, next week I’ll be explaining the future of bitcoin and related investments.

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on X.

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