AI can transform healthcare, but longevity starts with you

Hi Friends,

Last year, I wrote a story for Nautilus magazine about traveling to the Mayo Clinic brain bank to visit my father’s brain—yes, his actual brain—which he donated to scientists studying brain aging. And yes. His brain’s home is the most macabre library in the world. 

I hope my dad’s brain helps reveal new ways to slow aging. And right now, whether in brain science, the microbiome, or hormones, AI is speeding up longevity breakthroughs with remarkable precision. It’s why this week’s podcast with AI researcher Vasant Dhar, author of Thinking With Machines: The Brave New World of AI, struck me so deeply. AI can help us detect and predict disease patterns earlier, and it’s even being trained to “smell” illness before any symptoms appear.  Yet it still can’t replace the things that truly shape how we age: awareness, relationships, curiosity, and keeping our brains active.

As we head into US Thanksgiving week, it feels like the perfect moment to be grateful to both sides of the coin: the science that moves us forward and the deeply human aspects of ourselves that make life worth extending. 

Here’s to a restful weekend, 

Rachel

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NYU professor Dr. Vasant Dhar, author of the newly-released book Thinking With Machines: The Brave New World of AI, and Vasant Dhar’s Brave New World on Substack, studies how artificial intelligence will transform the way we diagnose disease, learn, and navigate healthcare. “But only if we stay clear-eyed about what we can trust it with—and what we absolutely can’t,” he says.

Dhar is “very optimistic” about AI’s potential for health, especially in diagnostics and early detection. Part of his work involves training AI to ‘smell,’ a sense humans are notoriously imprecise at interpreting, to detect disease long before symptoms appear.

Yet he is deeply concerned about the psychological effects of AI, as people anthropomorphize systems designed to be persuasive. 

“We’re living in an era of intelligent machines, but we shouldn’t confuse them with humans,” he says. 

In his classroom, he encourages students to use AI for facts but reserves discussion for the one thing machines can’t yet do: ask curious questions.

Dhar calls AI a “2-year-old alien,” powerful and fast-learning, but not human and not safe to trust uncritically. Ultimately, he believes AI could make healthcare more human by stitching together the “exhaust” of the system so clinicians can focus on genuine care.

Vasant Dhar’s Three Principles for Using AI for Your Health 

1. Assess the true cost of error.
Before handing a decision to AI, ask what happens if it’s wrong. Low-stakes experiments—fitness tweaks, recipes, daily habits—carry minimal downside. But in high-stakes domains like diagnosis, mental health, or risk assessment, the consequences of error can be profound. These are areas where human judgment must remain primary.

2. Treat AI as augmentation, not replacement.
AI can accelerate learning, sharpen insight, and broaden perspective, but it cannot replace human reasoning. Rely on it to summarize, analyze, or compare options while keeping your own thinking skills engaged. Overreliance weakens the very neuroplasticity and cognitive resilience that support longevity.

3. Protect your data as if it were public.
AI systems can store, repurpose, or leak information, even unintentionally. Never share anything—especially health data—you wouldn’t be comfortable seeing in the open. Data discipline is now a core component of personal health strategy. 

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Q: Why does AI matter so much for our future health and longevity?
A: Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is about thinking with machines. You can’t opt out. AI is this ‘alien intelligence’ that’s already better than us at many cognitive tasks, so the real question becomes: How do we use it wisely—especially when it comes to our health, our risks, and our care?

Q: Why is smell such a powerful new frontier in diagnosing disease?
A:  This whole project started with a teenage sneaker reseller who told me StockX literally smells shoes to spot counterfeits. I joked, ‘Why don’t you design a machine that can smell?’—and that throwaway comment became a research program. We’re now trying to detect disease from subtle molecular signatures long before symptoms. And we know the signal exists—Joy Milne smelled Parkinson’s years before diagnosis. AI may help us scale that ability.

Q: How can AI actually make healthcare more human?
A: Ironically, AI may help us put the care back into healthcare. Right now, the system feels like an assembly line that is fragmented, rushed, and impersonal. If AI handles the data exhaust—every reading, every note, every pattern—it frees clinicians to focus on what’s been lost: continuity, context, and meaningful human connection.

Q: What’s one way you personally use AI that’s improved your life?
A:  I use AI as a curiosity amplifier. I’ll ask it anything—from why salt preserves food better than sugar to untangling dense academic papers. But I never outsource my judgment. I always ask, ‘Does this really make sense?’ The moment you stop thinking for yourself, you lose the mental muscle that actually supports healthy aging.

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