By Eve Herold –
An AI for longevity? Yes, please. Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman is all in on the search for longer lifespans, and he’s putting his money where his mouth is. In 2023, he donated $180 million to Retro Biosciences, a healthcare startup seeking to extend life by 10 years through the use of Yamanaka factors, proteins that are believed to convert mature cells into stem cells. Now, Open AI has created GPT-4b, a generative AI aimed at dramatically increasing the efficiency of identifying proteins that will reprogram somatic cells. However, unlike Google’s AlphaFold, which simply predicts the shape of proteins, GPT-4b is designed to literally design new ones that can convert adult cells into stem cells. The AI is also a departure from traditional large language models. It’s trained on limited, highly specific data related to protein interactions—a small language model, according to Anthony Regalado, writing for MIT Technology Review. The accuracy and usefulness of GPT-4b, created through a collaboration between OpenAI and Retro, is now being studied by scientists. Keep in mind this is a baby AI that will no doubt continue to be tweaked and developed. But if it works as intended, it could lead to more cell therapies that could extend both the life- and the healthspan.