In 2005, Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers performed surgical parabiosis on pairs of old and young mice...
...linking together their circulatory systems to study the impact of “young blood” on the health of the older test subjects.
The results seemed to suggest that the blood of the young could have rejuvenating effects and may even reverse some aging.
Seizing upon those dreams of eternal youth, the tech startup Ambrosia is now seeking 600 people to be infused with millennial blood.
For $8,000, a volunteer will be able to join the clinical trial and receive 1.5 liters of plasma from a 16 to 25 year old donor.
Ethicists are cautioning there is little to support Ambrosia’s health claims and some fear the rise of a wealthy “vampire” class...
What if you could continue to communicate with your best friends even after you have suffered an untimely death?
It may soon be possible thanks to a chatbot from Russia’s Luka Inc that could recreate your personality from beyond the grave.
The company’s first creation is its namesake app modeled on CEO Eugenia Kuyda’s deceased best friend, Roman Mazurenko.
Following Mazurenko’s death in 2015, Kuyda uploaded thousands of his SMS messages to teach a neural network human dialogue.
For now, Kuyda has described @Roman as a means of letting go and considers chatting with him as “sending a message to heaven.”
But Luka believes that if used as a personal dairy, the app could learn your voice and live forever as your own digital avatar...
A new British startup sent a disturbing ripple through social media in 2016 when it announced “Scored Assured”...
...its plan to strip-mine your personal information from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram profiles.
Score Assured’s platform is built on natural language processing that can scrape posts, message threads, and site activity.
The company’s first product, Tenant Assured, assigns a risk rating that tells landlords how likely you are to pay your rent.
Your score is determined by personality, health, relationships, use of criminal words and indicators of “financial stress,”
“If you’re living a normal life,” Score Assured reassures, “then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about”...
In 2015’s “MegaFace” facial recognition competition, the Russian startup NTech Lab beat both Google and Facebook...
...eventually incorporating the technology into the 2016 release of its FindFace app in Russian app stores.
FindFace currently works on VK, the Russian version of Facebook, and can link photos of strangers to their social media profiles.
NTech Lab’s facial recognition algorithm reportedly has an accuracy rate as high as 70% when scanning real world photos.
After testing FindFace, cyber security firm Kasperksy Lab warned you could be “detected literally by any stranger with a phone.”
Kasperksy suggested that one of the only ways to avoid online stalkers would be to delete all your photos from the internet...
At the end of 2016, the Japanese company Vinclu Inc announced pre-orders for its new virtual personal assistant...
...a 3-D anime girl who comes creepily close to being a fake holographic girlfriend enslaved in a box.
Advertisements for the “Gatebox” reportedly included its first character, Azuma Hikari, with a sign that read "Master Now Wanted”...
...and it is thought that the device could replace real-life female interactions in the lives of lonely Japanese bachelors.
The Gatebox will be equipped with a camera, microphone, and sensors to monitor its owner and carry out conversations.
According to Vinclu, Azuma Hikari will have a "healing voice," while "supporting her master every day"...