straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. one of the key drivers of human thought and behaviour throughout history has been knowledge of our own mortality. from childhood each of us knows we will die. religion, philosophy and science all wrestle with that fact and have in different ways embraced the quest for immortality. my guess today, stephen cave, director of the cambridge institute for technology and humanity, is at the centre of a growing debate about the merits of extending human longevity. is it wise to seek to live forever?

stephen cave, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it's a great pleasure. you believe that our human awareness of our own mortality is absolutely central to the human story. why? well, all creatures strive to live on, to keep going. they would not be around us any more if they did not. they wouldn't be around us any more if they didn't. the mouse that didn't care about surviving wouldn't pass on its genes. so we come for from a long line of creatures that are determined to keep

going, but we have these big brains — that's part of our survival mechanism, if you like — that allow us to see the future, to generalise and we're conscious of ourselves as individuals, and that means we're conscious of our own deaths. and out of all the billions of creatures on earth, very few creatures have to live with that terrible awareness that one day, all of their efforts will come to nothing. and so, if we look back through human history, what we see is humanity struggling to make sense of this. some of the earliest archaeological evidence we find of human development is grave goods, for example, suggesting people very early believed in an afterlife. the oldest work of human literature, the epic of gilgamesh, is about the quest for immortality and wrestling to come to terms with mortality. and of course, we have religions and cultural artefacts that are ways of projecting ourselves into the future, and of course, we try very hard to stay alive in this world. so, what you are saying is that we're trying to make sense of our own mortality, but we're also

sort of wrestling against it, trying somehow or other to find the recipe to avoid it, to avert this ultimate finish? yes, there are lots of ways in which we can come to terms with mortality. we can tell ourselves that this life isjust the beginning, that the real life is in another realm somewhere else, but the basic plan is to stay alive today for as long as we can. religions, of course, have their own belief systems and whether it be western or eastern religions, they have different forms of an afterlife. at the beginning of this conversation, let's be clear about you yourself. you have no belief whatsoever in an afterlife? that's true. i grew up in a christian culture here in england. but i was sceptical of the stories i was being told, when my grandparents died, when i was quite young, and i wasn't even convinced that people telling those stories really believed in them. i think we live in something of a time of crisis for these kinds of belief systems,

at least in the west. you talk about the death of your father and that giving you a whole new awareness of the self being something which has a physicalform in terms of the brain and that when the brain dies, that self is terminated. why was the death of a loved one so central to that deeper understanding you gained? a lot of people have this experience that when they're children, don't think much about death, but then when they experience it — it could be the death of a pet or it could be often the death of a grandparent or some other loved one — then they think, "0k where have they gone?" and then they realise, "well, hang on, if it can happen to them, it can happen to me," and that moment is a terrifying one. but with my father, it was a little bit different because i was trained as a philosopher in the western tradition which is very dualist

— that means a separation of mind and body — and we're used to the idea prevalent in christianity and other religions, that the mind, the spirit, the soul, will go off to another realm. but when you see someone suffering from brain cancer, as was the case with my father, then you realise that actually the mind, the true self is very much bound up with this physical body and of course, in particular the brain. before we go into the detail of your analysis of different ways in which human beings right now are pursuing longevity, i just want to address what i see is a basic contradiction in your work. you seem to be saying that we humans are immature in the sense we fear death and that's why we are so attracted to belief systems which tell us we don't necessarily die. on the other hand, you seem to be saying it is extraordinarily positive and useful that we've developed all these different ways of coping with death and with the fear of death because it's motivated so much creativity,

so much that's positive in human development. so are you essentially selling us a negative story or positive story? well, i wouldn't say we're immature in being unable to face death and having to tell ourselves these stories. this is a human constant... forgive me, but i'm quoting from you now, "as a species," you say, "we need to outgrow our fear of death." i think, something i talk about the wisdom narrative that can be found in many cultures, looking back through our recorded history, both in religions like christianity, particularly in the old testament, and in buddhism and in other kinds of belief systems, like ancient greek philosophy, which are about trying to come to terms with death and facing mortality and thinking about the benefits that can come from that — for example, appreciating the time that we have here on earth. in the past on this programme, i have talked to scientists who have devoted a great deal of time, money and effort to the study of how to block,

even reverse the ageing process in human beings. dr aubrey de grey is one very well—known gerontologist proponent of this effort and he reckons that within our lifetimes, we may see human beings living for hundreds, if not 1,000 years. is that not something to embrace, indeed, to encourage scientists to work upon? there are many age—related diseases which are extremely debilitating and many lives are too short. there are many people right now who would would benefit from the kind of technologies that aubrey and others are working on, but if we are going to try to radically extend life, which is something humans have always dreamt of, then we need to prepare. we're not ready for the consequences of that right now. are you saying that if we prepare ourselves — and your think—tank and research institute is one of those that talks

about this a great deal — if we think about it deeply enough, it would be a good thing? i think it could be. because i'm sceptical about the possibility of immortality, sceptical about the desirability of immortality, people tend to frame my work as saying that 70 or 80 years is enough. i hope that when i'm 70 or 80, i would want to continue to live on. i hope that for everyone would feel like that about their lives. so i think the kind of research that is happening now that could help people live a few decades longer is very welcome. you're at the intersection of philosophy, technology and science. when you look at today's scientific breakthroughs and technological developments, do you believe that real significant progress is being made in life extension? yes, there is progress. there are reasons to be sceptical and there are reasons to be optimistic and we have to balance these two. the reasons to be sceptical are this is something humans

the reasons to be sceptical are... this is something humans have notjust been pursuing for thousands of years, but genuinely believed they were on the verge of for thousands of years. the ancient egyptians thought they were on the verge of creating an elixir, the ancient chinese thought it, scientists have been thinking it for centuries. but there has been real progress in the last decades in extending the lives of other organisms like fruit flies and nematode worms and even mammals like mice... if i may introduce the jellyfish. we now know there is one species ofjellyfish, some call it the immortaljellyfish, which has the ability — i think it's technically called transdifferentiation, to redevelop itself, to go back to it earliest form and then grow again. we seem now to be able to learn a great deal in terms of genetic engineering from other living organisms. if we can tap the codes that allow that to happen, surely immortality is no longer some sort of myth or dream? well, i think the real progress is possible. never before in human history have we put so much talent

and so much money into this area of research and there have been some real breakthroughs. so, i have moved from a position of scepticism to one of thinking that this is possible and, if it's possible, then we need to prepare because we're not ready now. does it worry you, and you've already talked about the money, that some of the most enthusiastic proponents of developing this research are the richest and arguably the most powerful private sector business people in the world — thinking ofjeff bezos, elon musk, peter teal — they all seem somewhat obsessed with this area of scientific research, extending human life. they have the money to do it, but it raises questions about whether the work they do will be open to others or will be reserved for themselves. it's such an important question. if they're donating large sums of money that drive forward

basic research for the benefit of all, then that should certainly be welcome, but one of the real concerns about the consequences of life extension technology is that it will be the privilege of a rich elite, and that, i think, would have disastrous consequences. a philosopher who i believe you know — certainly you know his work, you know his work, john davis — he wrote a book called the new methuselahs, he said, "imagine a world "in which the wealthy few live on in endless youth, "an elite gerontocracy of the near mortals". he said it would be a world where they behave like ranchers watching a herd of cattle — that is the likes of you and me — whose members change with the years while they remain in control. that's dystopian, that is truly scary. yes, it is terrifying. time is the most precious thing that we have. here in england, for example,

might be ten years between rich and poor or different areas of the country, and whenever that's reported on, it's reported with a sense of outrage, rightly. "something must be done." imagine if those differences weren't a decade but were centuries or thousands of years, i hope we would find that unacceptable. in your latest book, entitled should you choose to live forever?, you debate with a us—based philosopher, john martin fischer, who is extremely enthusiastic about this research and what it could achieve for humanity. could achieve for humanity — you much more sceptical. basically, his message to you is, you are a curmudgeon, just like, for example, thomas malthus in the 18th century who couldn't see the transformative effect that technology would have on food production, you can't see the ways in which the human spirit of innovation and development will allow us to live longer and benefit from that rather than sufferfrom it. john is an excellent philosopher based in sunny california and he likes to contrast his sunny california optimism with my

english melancholy... curmudgeon, he calls you. curmudgeon, exactly, but i think we need to be cautious and we need to look at the possible downsides. broadly speaking, i'm incredibly excited by new technologies, life extension technologies and lots of others. but my mission and that of the new institute we founded, is to make these transformations go well and we only do that by thinking also about how these technologies, including life extension, can go wrong and what we need to do to make them go well. you say you are broadly and in principle excited. you do not come across as excited, you come across as deeply concerned. you talk about the earth's carrying capacity, that, i guess, means its resource base and what it can — the number of people it can manage to keep alive on this planet — you talk about the carrying capacity being overburdened. and you say that a longevity of 120—160 years for the average human would make life

pretty much impossible. well, i am very much concerned. i think everyone ought to be concerned about the drain on the planet's resources that we're exerting with 8 billion people and we need to be tackling that. my worry is, when people say it would be fantastic if we have a breakthrough in life extension, and sure there'll be problems but we'll solve them. fine, but show me how you can solve the problems of biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse and global warming now, and then i'll believe you if you tell me you can do it if everyone's living to 120 and population has doubled. those material challenges are clearly very real, but you go beyond the material challenges. you talk about the philosophical objections that you have as well. you seem to be suggesting that actually, if we could live much longer and posit the notion of forever, ie, immortality, it would be extremely bad for us — bad for us because it would drain us of motivation, we would all be bored and we would be unhappy human beings. do you really believe that?

the philosophical debate about immortality has been focused on genuinely unending life, and i think given the prospect of eternity, we would either have to become something very different to the very finite creatures we are now with a limited set of interests or we would become terribly bored and fall into ennui. but that doesn't mean that applies to the real prospects of life extension of, you know, a few decades. but it is worth bearing in mind that, you know, but it is worth bearing in mind that hundreds of millions of people right now are already depressed. this is worth taking seriously. there's an old joke about two ladies in a canteen and one says, "the food here's terrible," and the other one says, "yeah, and the portions are so small." well, why would you want a larger portion of terrible food? i mean, we have hundreds... i like thejoke and i get the message, but there are equally many millions of people living around

the world that are deeply depressed by the notion that actually, before very long, they are going to die and it gives them an overwhelming sense of the pointlessness of everything. so, life can be full ofjoy, and i think our priorities should be to enable as many people as possible to live in full health for as long as possible. and so, if the focus of this kind of research is on what you call compressing morbidity, making — people who are ageing healthier and extending people's lives that way, i'd be very supportive. but life extension for a few while others are living a life of depression and debilitation wouldn't be right. your debate opponent in this book, john martin fischer, he asks you to indulge in a thought experiment. he says... you — stephen — imagine that i have an elixir which can... when you reach the age of 80, you can prolong your life by a weekend, at the age of 80, your life is good, you're you're in good physical and mental health. would you drink that elixirjust to ensure that for the next week, you go on living that good life? i hope i would. i hope that's what i want to do when i'm 80. you hope you would.

so, if you would drink it for one week, what would you do at the end of that one week? would you want to drink it again? that's much harder to say. why? if you've just had a great week, because of the elixir, surely you'd want another great weekend and another after that. i mean, his message beyond the thought experiment is that actually when you drill down into it, if you have a good life, why not want to prolong it for as long as you possibly can? and i'm all for creating a world in which as many people as possible can have that kind of life that they embrace. and that's why i'm very supportive of much of the research that's going into cellular rejuvenation and the other things that will help us tackle the diseases of ageing. i hope these breakthroughs will come, but as a society, we need to think carefully about what that means for ensuring people have good mental and physical health for as long as possible. what do you think of those people, some of them, very, very rich, some of them

indeed scientists who actually, while they wait for the magical forever life solution to be found, they want their own bodies to be frozen cryogenically, for liquid nitrogen to perhaps give them, albeit a very small chance, of being revived at some later point when we have found this miraculous answer to forever life? well, the belief that we can one day be resurrected, whether by gods or by scientists, is a very ancient scientists, is a very ancient one, so i understand the impulse. i think the chance of success are very, very small. freezing someone is very bad for you, as a rule, because of murder, your cells turn to slush and so on. but if you say this to someone who, you know, signs up for this practice, they'll say the chances might be small, but they're better than coming back from cremation. so, you know, i understand why they're taking the odds. let's leave the freezer to one side. let's think about a different way in which we might in the future think of immortality. that is al — artificial intelligence — giving us the capacity to download what is the essence of ourself — that is what happens in our brain — download the memories, the thoughts, the emotions,

the material that makes us �*us', onto a computer, to digitise it, to turn ourselves into digital selves which can be kept in a metal box forever. isn't that going to be a form of immortality? well, it is...certainly something that some people believe is a form of immortality and is already on offer. i mean, there are already companies promising something like this, whether as a way of managing grief. so if it's a loved one that dies, or as a route to immortality when thinking about your own prospects. but i don't...| don't think this is a route to immortality... well, it's notjust a means of maintaining sort of memories, it's not like keeping photos on your phone. this can be generative. this can be the essence of you, which generates new thoughts, new conversations, which keeps you, in a sense, alive. now, your institute works on technology in the future and humanity. is that not something that actually is a realistic possibility?

yes, it's a great question, and we're in deeply philosophical territory when thinking about, is that really you? i don't think it is, i think i'm this particular animal, this particular body, this organism, and no organism is transferred but there are philosophers who differ, and we do in fact have a research project that's thinking about what this will mean for how we grieve, how we think about our own mortality, for religion if this becomes a common practice, which it might. let's talk a little more about artificial intelligence. i've already referred to colleagues of yours who, with the greatest of respect, call you a curmudgeon on the issue of prolonging life. they also i think call you a curmudgeon when it comes to your attitude to articulate intelligence because there are so many people out there working on this who are deeply excited and positive about the future. demis hassabis of google deep mind, he says that "things are changing "at digital speed,

we are in the renaissance "of scientific discovery, ai has the potential," he says, "to help with humanity's greatest challenges. "it's going to be transformative, it's going to be beneficial." you, on the other hand, seem to spend your time talking about the need for global regulation. why are you being, again, curmudgeonly? well, those two things are definitely not opposed in global regulation and innovation — on the contrary. i think we need regulation in order to make this technology go well. that's my mission with all of these technologies — to ask, how do we make them go well? of course they have enormous potential to bring prosperity. that's the history of technology. but in the long run, it tends to bring great prosperity and we enjoy the lives that we do at the moment, and only through technology can we support... it's sort of easy to call for regulation and demand that the international committee acts together to achieve meaningful regulation.

but isn't the truth of it, it's never going to happen because the key drivers of ai development are vast corporations driven by greed, i suppose, on one level, and nation states who are driven to, a large part, by national security interests and great power rivalries. the idea that those different actors are all going to come together and be collaborative, it divides what we know about human history and human nature, doesn't it? well, there's no denying it's incredibly hard, and at the moment, researchers in my institute and across the world are looking at what kind of precedents are the best to follow for al. is it something like the way we manage nuclear weapons, is it something like the way we manage chemical weapons or is it more like climate change, for example? and what do you think? well, i don't think the nuclear weapon analogy is a good one because we're talking about one very specific technology that's very hard to build, whereas ai, it isn't one problem, it's something that's going to impact on every aspect of life and it's something we're all going to have access to. so we need to think of it as a very broad range

of problems — ai in healthcare, ai in weapon systems, ai in misinformation, for example, and use different regulatory mechanisms, different ways of cooperating in order to manage those. but this conversation has been, again, a fascinating mix of philosophy, history, science and technology. what makes you think viewing humanity over a span of time, that human beings are going to find the ways to turn our ever—deepening knowledge of ai and its capacities into something positive rather than something that's so...sews the seeds of our own destruction? we might not. well, now, you're curmudgeon now. i'm trying to be optimistic and suggest that some kind of collaboration is possible. there are real precedents for coming together to solve urgent problems. often, it takes too long, as it is with climate change. but i think we should be optimistic that people have started thinking about the impacts of ai and how to contain

it relatively early. i mean, with other technologies like printing or cars and so on, it took centuries or decades to come up with meaningful regulation. so i think we should be optimistic about the many initiatives that are already springing up. stephen cave, it's been fascinating. thanks for being on hardtalk. thank you very much. hello there. storm isha's likely to cause significant damage to cause significant damage and disruption in parts of the uk as we push

into monday morning. met office amber warnings are in force for severe gales with damaging gusts and heavy rain. this heavy rain combined with snow melt, because of milder temperatures across northern areas, is likely to lead to localised flooding. the centre of storm isha passing to the north of scotland, widespread severe gales on the southern flank pretty much covering most of the uk. these are the sorts of wind gusts we can expect, even inland up to 60 mph or more, in excess of 70—80 mph around irish sea coasts and 90 mph over parts of northern ireland and western scotland. the amber warning is valid until 6am. these are the temperatures we can expect to start monday morning, 6—ii celsius. so, storm isha's likely to bring significant disruption to travel on monday morning. stay tuned to your local radio bulletins and also bbc breakfast for the latest updates.

monday itself looks very windy — though storm isha pulling away into the norwegian sea, staying blustery with showers, and some showers will be heavy at times. best of sunshine will tend to be over eastern parts of the country — these temperatures 7—11. but as we move through monday evening and overnight, the winds will begin to down as a ridge of high pressure starts to build and the showers die off over northern and western areas. it'll turn dry and clear and cool over the north and east of the uk, but the next spell of wet and windy weather early on tuesday morning. here it is on the pressure chart — the next low pressure system to bring a spell of rain and gales. not as severe as storm isha, but still a blustery day, wet and windy weather over western areas spreading to all areas. could see some transient snow on the mountains of scotland before the mild air starts to move north across the whole country and it will be very mild indeed for the time of year — temperatures reaching 14, maybe 15 celsius. the weather remains quite

changeable through the week, wet and windy spells interspersed with drier and sunnier moments. generally for the time of year, it's going to be staying mild throughout.

welcome to newsday, reporting

live from singapore. i'm suranjana tewari. the headlines.. florida governor ron desantis drops out of the race for the white house, and throws his support behind donald trump. i can't ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don't have a clear path to victory. accordingly, i am today suspending my campaign. the former president heard the news at a campaign stop of his own, and thanked the governor for pulling out.... i think most of those votes, the polls say that most of those votes, certainly many of them, come to us, but we don't need them because the polljust came out, suffolkjust came out, the boston globe and they say we are very far ahead. more than 25,000 people have now been killed in gaza since the war with israel began — according to the hamas—run health ministry. and. tens of thousands of homes in the uk are without power — as storm isha brings high winds and rain.