AI and Longevity

For many years after its establishment as an academic discipline in the 1950s, artificial intelligence (AI) seemed for most people like a topic for science fiction. Today, however, we are increasingly seeing applications of AI embedded in our everyday lives, including in the domains of health care, finance, transportation, logistics, and entertainment, among others. As AI becomes more ubiquitous in both our personal and professional lives, we will continue to discover new and innovative applications of the technology that will transform the way we live, work, and play across the life course.

Bank of America and the MIT AgeLab are working together to advance the understanding of AI’s current impacts and to envision future applications and implications for longevity. In short, we ask about the ways AI will impact how we live longer, better.

To explore these topics, the MIT AgeLab developed two surveys in the summer of 2020, one for consumers and the other for AI experts across domains, to gain an understanding of attitudes toward AI in the present and predictions for how AI will affect aging and longevity in the future. These surveys featured questions related to the impact of AI across five different domains related to longevity: health and caregiving; infrastructure and community; workplace, benefits, and career; social interaction and information flow; and finance. The surveys also sought to reveal general attitudes about AI among consumers and experts.

Bank of America and the MIT AgeLab have released a comprehensive report on the findings from the consumer and expert surveys.

With Bank of America, the MIT AgeLab held a two-day long symposium on November 19th and 20th, 2020, to discuss the implications of AI for the longevity economy. Titled Charting the Longevity Economy's Endless Frontier: How Artificial Intelligence Will Enable Us to Live Longer, Better, the symposium convened experts from academia, industry, and government for conversations on how artificial intelligence will impact old age and the life course and potential benefits and risks of an AI-driven future.