Three Not-So-Bad Things on Aging and Longevity
A Weekly Newsletter
There’s no denying it: we are constantly bombarded with bad news. A pandemic, climate change, inflation, war, political discord—the list goes on. Here at the Longevity Project, we understand that bad news can be enough to take years off your life, so we want to do our part (however small) to balance the scales.
At the end of the day, though, we’re realists. Good news is hard to come by, no matter how hard you look. So we’ll aim a little lower and without further ado, we are pleased to share our first weekly newsletter: Three Not-So-Bad Things on Longevity and Aging. Feel free to share with others and send us items you want to see included. With some luck, you will see this newsletter (and some more not so bad news) every Wednesday.
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October 29, 2026
1. Even the Damn Robots Are Ageist.
Against women that is. That’s according to a new study published in Nature, in which researchers found widespread evidence of bias against older women in the algorithms that power popular AI tools such as ChatGPT.
To study how AI reinforces workplace gender and age bias, the researchers asked ChatGPT to create over 34,500 resumes for 54 occupations using male and female names. The AI-generated resumes for women depicted them as younger and less experienced than men, even when starting from identical information. When ChatGPT evaluated these resumes, it rated older men highest, revealing a bias that favors them while disadvantaging older women.
It's not (one might guess) that Artificial Intelligence is inherently ageist, but rather that the broad datasets of human experience that the AI models pull from are replete with examples of gendered ageism. The researchers themselves reviewed over 1.4 million images and videos from major platforms and discovered that women are consistently portrayed as younger than men, especially in higher-status, better-paid jobs. The AI models pick up on those cues, and downgrade older women as job candidates as a result.
AI driven recruiting and review tools are being offered not only as an efficiency measure, but also as a way of bringing a more objective lens to candidate evaluation. This new study suggests that at least when it comes to the challenges of gendered ageism, we still have a long way to go.
2. Next, Those Robots Will Be Telling Us That Time Moves Faster as We Age.
The other day, we were puzzling at our bookshelf, trying to decide between reading one of our treasured Archie comic books or a new research report in Communications Biology called “Temporal Dedifferentiation of Neural States with Age During Naturalistic Viewing.” It was an awfully tough call, but we chose the latter, and it is a good thing we did, because the researchers were trying to get at a question that people have struggled with for many years: why does time seem to pass faster as you get older?
It's not a new question: in 1890, the American psychologist William James observed that “the same space of time seems shorter as we grow older” and many have argued that this has to do with the nature of experiences. New experiences seem to last longer than familiar experiences, so as you age – and seemingly have less opportunity for first-time things – time appears to move faster. That may be true – that first Archie comic book lingered with us seemingly forever – but researchers are now finding biological explanations for how time seems to move more quickly as we age.
In the aforementioned study, researchers analyzed brain scans from 577 people aged 18 to 88 who had watched the same eight-minute clip from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Using a computer algorithm to detect shifts in brain activity, they found that older adults’ brains transitioned between new activity states less frequently than those of younger adults. In other words, older participants’ brains spent longer in each state (and therefore a fewer total number of states) before shifting to a new one.
According to the researchers, when our brains register fewer distinct “events” in a given period, the passage of time feels compressed. As we age, our brains may simply mark fewer moments, giving us the sense that the days, months, and years are slipping faster than they used to.
3. A Purposeful Moment a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.
A little clunkier than an “apple a day . . .” we admit, but there is a point here: that happiness and fulfillment lie not with technology immersion, but in leading a purposeful and meaningful life - or at least that’s what a new study from the Cornell Purpose and Identity Processes Lab tells us. For the last six years, researchers at the Lab have been evaluating whether small, purposeful acts can create measurable boosts in happiness and health. They have done so by giving $400 “contributions” - no strings attached - to about 1,200 randomly selected high school and college students, asking them to use the money in a way that aligns with what matters most to them, whether that’s helping their community, family, or themselves.
Before and after the eight-week period during which recipients spent the funds, researchers measured the emotional and mental states of both participants and a control group. While the groups tended to start at the same levels of emotional wellness, those who received the money later scored significantly higher on measures of well-being, purpose, belonging, and emotional balance.
It’s not really a surprise. Research in recent years has found that a greater sense of purpose is associated not only with psychological well-being, but also with reduced inflammation under stress, lower risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, slower age-related cognitive decline, and greater longevity. And while the Cornell study focused on younger people, the results are universalizable to all stages of life, including the second half of life. Whether your purpose is supporting your family, helping kids in your neighborhood, or even writing a slightly snarky newsletter about aging and longevity, there is happiness and health to be had from identifying and pursuing that purpose.
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