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Improvements in health care, sanitation, and diet over last 100 years have significantly increased life expectancy. However, this increase in how long we can expect to live has not been accompanied by a similar increase in healthy life expectancy, defined as the time spent free of major illness or disease.

Professor Lynne Cox working in the research laboratory

In a position paper recently published in The Lancet, Professor Lynne Cox from the Department of Biochemistry and Professor Richard Faragher from the University of Brighton argue that governments across the world should prioritise increasing populations’ healthy life expectancy (also known as healthspan) as opposed to focusing uniquely on increasing life expectancy. The benefits of increasing people’s healthspan are huge. Not only would this improve quality of life, but it would also have enormous positive economic effects. So far, however, efforts at improving people’s quality of later life have, rather counterproductively, neglected the potential that research into biological ageing processes can have on improving later life health.

Read the full story on the Department of Biochemistry website

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Brian Christian is an acclaimed American author and researcher who explores the human and societal implications of computer science. His bestselling books include ‘The Most Human Human’ (2011), ‘Algorithms to Live By’ (2016), and ‘The Alignment Problem’ (2021), the latter of which The New York Times said ‘If you’re going to read one book on artificial intelligence, this is the one.’ He holds a degree from Brown University in computer science and philosophy and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. Here, Brian talks about the latest chapter of his career journey: starting a DPhil (PhD) at the University of Oxford to grapple with the challenge of designing AI programs that truly align with human values.