Fighting Aging as an Effective Altruism Cause: A Model of the Impact of the Clinical Trials of Simple Interventions
Abstract: The effective altruism movement aims to save lives in the most cost-effective ways. In the future, technology will allow radical life extension, and anyone who survives until that time will gain potentially indefinite life extension. Fighting aging now increases the number of people who will survive until radical life extension becomes possible. We suggest a simple model, where radical life extension is achieved in 2100, the human population is 10 billion, and life expectancy is increased by simple geroprotectors like metformin by three more years on average, so an additional 250 million people survive until “immortality”. The cost of clinical trials to prove that metformin is a real geroprotector is $60 million. In this simplified case, the price of a life saved is around 24 cents, 10 000 times cheaper than saving a life from malaria by providing bed nets. However, fighting aging should not be done in place of fighting existential risks, as they are complementary causes.
Highlights:
● Aging and death are the main causes of human suffering now.
● Simple interventions could extend human lives until aging is defeated.
● These interventions need to be clinically tested before FDA approval.
● A trial of the life extension drug metformin is delayed by lack of funds.
● Starting trials now will save 250 million people from death, at a cost of $0.24 for each life saved.
Please comment on the preprint of the article here: https://goo.gl/WaEYt5
Thank you for review.
Taking median date of the AI arrival like 2062 is not informative as in half cases it will not be here at 2062. The date of 2100 is taken as the date when it (or other powerful life-extending technology) almost sure will appear as a very conservative estimate. Maybe it should be justified more in the text.
Yes, it is assumed by Barzilai and gwern that metformin will extend human life 1 year, based on many human cohorts studies, but to actually prove it we need TAME study, and until this study is finished, metformin can't be used as a life-extending drug. So any year of delay of the experiment means a year in the delay in global implementation. For now, it is already delayed for 2 years by luck of funds.
Given all uncertainty, the simplified model provides only an order of magnitude of the effect, but a more detailed model which take into account actual age distribution is coming.
As the paper is already too long, we tried to outline the main arguments or provide links to the articles where detailed refutation is presented, as in case of Gavrilov, 2010, where the problem of overpopulation is analysed in detail. But it is obvious now that this points should be clarified.
The next round of professional grammar editing is scheduled.
Thanks for the reply. Despite my very negative tone I do think this is an important work, and doing good cost benefit analysis like these is very difficult.
I don't share the intuition that human level AI will rapidly cause the creation of powerful life-extending technology. This seems to be relyi... (read more)