During the final day of Stanford University’s Century Summit on longevity, panelists raised big picture questions — a coming work revolution, the effects of climate change on life expectancy, and how society must evolve to support longer lifespans.

The summit, sponsored by the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL), the Longevity Project, and the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program, brought together experts and practitioners across a wide range of sectors to discuss the dramatic effects of people living longer than any earlier generation.

In a panel Tuesday on artificial intelligence and the future of work, Paul Oyer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, predicted that employers will find creative ways to employ 70 year olds, who will soon outnumber those in their 20s. 

“Age discrimination,” according to Oyer, “is a luxury only when you have a lot of young people.” 

Angela Aristidou, a fellow with the Digital Economy Lab at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, explained that people will likely need to repurpose their skills but stressed that the ability to show emotional intelligence, work with teams, and strategize are human, not AI capabilities.

Age discrimination … is a luxury only when you have
a lot of young people. Paul Oyer, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business

Rob Jackson, a Stanford earth systems science professor, framed climate change as an issue that is directly shortening the longer live spans that people could otherwise expect.

Air pollution from the use of fossil fuels “is killing us now,” Jackson said, with 8 million people per year dying from its effects.

“Energy solutions,” such as electric cars and the replacement of gas stoves with electric ones, “will make us healthier and help us live longer,” he said. 

SCL founding director Laura Carstensen explained the New Map of Life, an SCL initiative that helps imagine what a “good” 100-year-life would look like and how governmental and societal structures need to change in order to help everyone get there.

Carstensen emphasized the need to reset how longevity is viewed — not as something involving only older people but as a concept that should be considered from birth on, asking, for example, how to raise a child who is likely to live to be 100? 

What generations ‘owe each other’

Another big question: “For the first time in history we have four and five generations alive at the same time,” said Carstensen. “What do the generations owe each other?” 

Innovative methods to support these longer lives include the WA Cares Fund, through which the state of Washington collects .58 percent of worker paychecks to create a caregiving benefit that workers can later draw on when needed. Relatives who serve as caregivers, long unpaid, can also apply for compensation from the fund. 

Returning to the first day’s themes of the need to build communities throughout these longer lives, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Brian Lowery, author of the book “Selfless,” explained that we are the product of our interactions with others.  

The engrained American idea of “rugged individualism” is “a fiction” in Lowery’s view.

“The idea that you can exist on your own … is just not possible,” he said. “Relationships are part of who and what you are.”