⏩ Extreme anti-aging, how to use ChatGPT and carbon negative building panels.

The Future Normal: Fast Forward #36

This week’s glimpses of the future normal span construction materials, extreme healthcare and AI (of course). 

But as well as being early signals of where things are headed, each also highlights how innovation happens. Where should you be looking for inspiration? How should you engage with new technologies? And how can you dislodge an incumbent?  

But first, let’s meet Bryan…

How to Be 18 Years Old Again for Only $2 Million a Year

🔮 Future Normal // Bryan Johnson is a tech entrepreneur who sold his business for $800 million. As Bloomberg reports, “this year, he’s on track to spend at least $2 million on his body. He wants to have the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, tendons, teeth, skin, hair, bladder, penis and rectum of an 18-year-old.” Certain markers suggest he’s even reduced his biological age, thanks to his extreme physical regime.  

💡 So What? // Many of you will instinctively recoil a little. These God-like fantasies of eternal youth will feel somehow unnatural to many readers. However there is a very tangible insight you can take from this story today. There’s a saying that “billionaires are a policy failure”. However, just as the frontier tech used in space travel and Formula One eventually filters down into everyday life, so too will many of the less-extreme practices and technologies that Johnson is exploring. And this transfer from the fringe to the center isn’t always about money. Surpluses enable experimentation. Young people can spend hours recording Tiktok videos; billionaires can spend millions of dollars on wild, untested anti-aging technologies. To find opportunities, look for areas where people are ‘spending’ (skeptics will call it ‘wasting’) their surpluses, and think about how to reduce the time / money / assets required. 

Some learnings from experimenting with ChatGPT

🔮 Future Normal // Generative AI will change the world. We just have to figure out how. In recent days we’ve seen Google release its text-to-music AI, a politician deliver the first AI-written speech, an elite British private school cancel homework, Springer Nature ban ChatGPT as a scientific coauthor (in the future that will be like crediting “Google” as a researcher), while the program passed law and business school exams, while CNET admitted its AI-written explainers were full of mistakes. 

💡 So what? // ChatGPT is 2023’s crypto. BuzzFeed announced it would use AI to create personalized quizzes and its stock promptly doubled in value. Your feeds have probably been taken over by get-rich-quick threads promising ‘like this post and I’ll send you my free AI content system that will give you a year’s worth of content in 10-minutes!!!!’.

Despite the snark, I’ve found my early experiments with ChatGPT both frustrating and inspiring. It’s seemingly incapable of summarizing the articles I share here reliably – it claimed that Bryan Johnson had an anti-aging chip implanted in his head (even when prompted to accurately report the facts). And most of its content is painfully bland – “anti-aging technology will be a big growth area”.

However, I’m learning that if you keep probing and keep asking it to go deeper and expand on its initial points, then it can be a useful tool to help you think of new, more fully formed ideas – for example what would the social implications be of multi-generational relationships, where kids could routinely interact with their great- or even their great-great grandparents?

Now I probably could have come to that insight myself, and certainly if talking things through with a (human) sparring partner. That’s where I see the real value in ChatGPT. Don’t think of it as an intern that you can delegate to. Instead think of it as a fast, always-available copilot that helps you explore ideas.

Plantd Raises $10M, Pioneering Carbon-Negative Building Materials

🔮 Future Normal // Construction is a dirty, resource-intensive business. Plantd is a startup founded by a couple of SpaceX engineers which makes building carbon-negative panels – like 2x4s – out of grass instead of trees. Thanks to the faster harvest cycle of grass and Plantd’s electric, modular and automated manufacturing process the company claims to produce the same amount of material using 9x less land than traditional timber forests and a fraction of the environmental footprint.

💡 So What? // Manufacturing used to be seen as boring or dirty – now it’s where anyone with ambitions to save the world is looking. And while the sexy, sci fi-sounding synthetic biology innovations attract the headlines, I also love pioneers who are transforming our most basic materials in low-tech but sustainable ways – from concrete to carpet tiles. But the real reason Plantd’s grass-based material is worth sharing? Because it shows how the best eco-challengers will position their products – yes, it’s carbon-negative, but it’s also stronger, lighter, more moisture-resistant, and grown locally. Oh, and it’s the same price. Something to think about if you aspire to have a huge impact.

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Finally, a huge thanks to everyone who signed up to join our book launch team last week. We're working through all your suggestions and requests :)

If you're going to be at SXSW then we'd love to see you at our featured keynote, or the more informal Non-Obvious 7-minute meetup. Alternatively, DM me if you'd like to discuss another side event.

Thanks for reading,

Henry