Will AI Save You From Your Unhealthy Lifestyle?

I have recently seen a few Artificial Intelligence enthusiasts speculate that in the next 10 to 15 years, diet, exercise, and other healthy lifestyle factors will no longer really be necessary for good health and longevity. Basically, the idea is that advancements in AI and supercomputers will allow for the development of drugs and/or other forms of treatment that will not only end all diseases and rapidly heal injuries, but will also allow us to build muscle and lose fat completely effortlessly and without side-effects.

So, we’ll all look like fitness models and live forever while eating chips and candy and drinking milkshakes while lounging on the couch all day – which we’ll be able to do because AI will be doing all of our jobs (don’t worry about how we’ll get money to buy chips, candy, milkshakes, and couches – AI will work that out too)!

Sounds great! And here I was concerned that AI was going to be like the T-800 (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the movie, The Terminator. Silly me, it’s apparently going to be more like the T-800 that’s been reprogrammed to protect John Conner in Terminator 2: Judgment Day!

Whew – that’s a relief!

Forgive me for being skeptical, but although I imagine that advancements in AI will likely improve some aspects of health care, I doubt that its going to magically transform our bodies into perfect specimens of health that live forever without any effort on our parts.

Even if that does happen, would that really be a good thing? I mean, if everyone starts living considerably longer lives and presumably retains the ability to produce offspring for many more years than is currently possible, I’m thinking we might start to have some problems with overpopulation. But there I go, being silly again – the AI will no doubt fix that problem too, although it could involve an original Terminator scenario!

Maybe AI could play a somewhat less miraculous role in improved health and longevity than producing cure-all “superdrugs.” For instance, a robot could simply smack the food out of your hand if you were eating something unhealthy. Or maybe just scold or guilt you into better health with annoyingly helpful voice prompts like, “Do you really need that doughnut?” or “Let’s go to the gym!” Or maybe it could employ punishments like electric shocks delivered through brain implants to motivate you to make better health choices. The future is wide open!

In any event, if you’ve seen the predictions for AI’s near-future impact on health and longevity, and are thinking there’s no point in eating right and exercising anymore if AI is going to give you a new body 10 years from now, you might want to re-think that.

First of all, you have to make it through the 10 years, and probably more like 30 years or more, because even if AI can do the research and develop the products much faster, the Natural Stupidity (NS) of government bureaucracy will likely still be more than capable of slowing things to a snail’s pace.

Getting some exercise, eating well, managing stress, etc. are going to be important until such time as the AI super drugs become available and you can totally let yourself go.

Taking care of yourself now helps you avoid a lot of problems and allows you to live a more pleasant life while you wait for AI to make all that self-care unnecessary.

And while diet, exercise, etc. might seem like a waste of time and effort that will be worthless when you can get the body of your dreams with a pill (or perhaps some type of energy beam device like the tricorders in Star Trek), they’re what we’ve got to keep us looking and feeling good right now.

Of course, maybe I’m wrong and the AI fans are right -that AI will fix your body and life for you in just a few short years. But years of neglecting your body add up. If I’m wrong, you’ll be out a bunch of time and effort that you didn’t need to expend. If I’m right though, that time and effort to live a healthy life will make for a much better future than what you’ll have letting things go and waiting for AI to hopefully save you from your bad habits somewhere down the line.

Until next time…

George F. Best, D.C.