The AI revolution isn’t coming — it’s here, and it could transform your healthspan, wealthspan, and Next Act more than anything since the post-WWII boom. In this episode of Next Act Ninjas, Dr. Rachael Van Pelt unpacks the U.S. government’s bold AI Action Plan, the staggering longevity breakthroughs experts predict, and why living to 100+ could rewrite the rules of retirement. Learn how to adapt, thrive, and keep your purpose — and your paycheck — in the Age of Intelligence.
The AI revolution isn’t coming — it’s here, and it could transform your healthspan, wealthspan, and Next Act more than anything since the post-WWII boom. In this episode of Next Act Ninjas, Dr. Rachael Van Pelt unpacks the U.S. government’s bold AI Action Plan, the staggering longevity breakthroughs experts predict, and why living to 100+ could rewrite the rules of retirement. Learn how to adapt, thrive, and keep your purpose — and your paycheck — in the Age of Intelligence.
Chapters
00:00 A Transformation on Par with the 1950s Infrastructure Boom
03:17 Solving Medicine: A New Era of Healthspan
06:53 From Lifespan to Wealthspan: Will Your Money Last if You Live Longer?
11:00 What we can Learn from the FIRE Movement
14:58 The New World of AGI: Cautionary and Optimistic
Hey, hey, welcome back Ninjas! In case you missed it, our nation is on the cusp of a transformation as profound as the post-WWII boom that built America's highways and suburbs. And it's going to impact your Next Act. Just last month, the Trump administration unveiled America's AI Action Plan, accompanied by executive orders that essentially called for "Build baby build" when it comes to artificial intelligence.
And look, regardless of your political views or what you think about the current administration, this is happening. The plan isn't just PR and tech optimism either. It signals an all-hands national effort to accelerate AI development, deregulate hurdles, and invest in infrastructure on a massive scale. In fact, one pillar of the plan focuses on promoting rapid build-out of data centers and semiconductor fabs, even streamlining permits to make it happen.
You can think of it like the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, but for the digital age. Back then, President Eisenhower built 41,000 miles of highways to unite our country. Today's leaders are fast-tracking high-tech infrastructure, from data centers to chip factories to energy grids, in an effort to connect and power our country in this AI era. It's a massive push for national infrastructure, reminiscent of those mid-century projects. And it's intended to turbocharge our innovative capacity so that American workers and families thrive in this AI era.
Why does it matter to you, my Ninja crowd? Because I think it shows us how seriously society is taking the AI revolution. The government is essentially saying we must win this AI race. They are pouring resources into it much like they did the Manhattan Project, Space Race, or that highway build of the past. In other words, AI is not just Silicon Valley's latest cool tech, it is a fundamental paradigm shift that is going to completely reshape our economy, our jobs, and our daily lives in the coming years. It is far bigger than the discovery of electricity or the internet. You may not like it, you may not be ready for it, but the next few years are going to be transformational.
And we're not just bystanders in all this. We are an integral part of this transformation, which is why I want you to think about your Next Act through that big-picture frame of reference. We are already experiencing a major coordinated effort to integrate AI into everything, which just means that changes are coming fast. But rather than feel alarmed, we can choose to feel energized and empowered. Just as the interstate highway opened up new opportunity for businesses and travel, the AI infrastructure is going to open up opportunities in healthcare, finance, education, and beyond, but only if we're prepared to adapt. So let's talk about what this Age of Intelligence could mean for two huge parts of our lives, our healthspan and our wealthspan, especially for those of us entering our Next Act.
I'm going to start with health. One promise of advanced artificial general intelligence, AGI, is a revolution in medicine and healthcare. We've all heard the hype about AI doctors or super-drug-discovery algorithms, but there's real substance behind it. Top AI experts are predicting some astounding advances in longevity. For example, Dario Amodei, the CEO of the AI company Anthropic, recently painted an almost sci-fi picture of what powerful AI could do in the next decade. He believes AI could, in the next 7 to 12 years, help treat nearly all infectious diseases, eliminate most cancers, cure genetic disorders, and halt Alzheimer's at the earliest stages.
That's incredible! We'd essentially be knocking out the major causes of death and disease. He even suggests that within 5 to 10 years, we might see cures or effective treatments for conditions like PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, and addiction using AI developed drugs or genetic screening. In short, AI might attack both the diseases of the body and the struggles of the mind. Now, Amodei is admittedly a techno-optimist, some might say too optimistic, but he's not alone.
Many people in the AI and biotech fields talk about us reaching "Longevity Escape Velocity", this idea that we could keep extending human life faster than time passes. Amodei himself expects that if these breakthroughs happen, the average human lifespan could easily double to 150 years. Yes, you heard that right, an average lifespan of 150 years. It sounds wild, but remember, extraordinary things have already happened. In 1900, the average life expectancy in the US was only about 47 years. Today, it's around 78. We've already gained three extra decades of life thanks to medicine, sanitation, and science. So it's not all that crazy to think that we could double life expectancy with the help of AGI.
Just imagine a world where living to 100 is average and making it to 110 or 120 is commonplace. In that world, 60 will truly be middle-aged. Importantly, if we "solve" medicine or even just solve major pieces of it, we're talking about dramatically extending healthspan, how well you live, not just how long you live. AI-driven personalized medicine could easily keep us healthy and strong right up to the very end. This will likely be through a combination of AI discovered drugs and treatments that cure diseases or reverse aging at the cellular level. AI will also personally tailor preventive strategies to suit your DNA and lifestyle. Frankly, it's breathtaking! Some experts say that AGI is going to give us a century's worth of medical progress in just a few years.
While I think we should take such rosy predictions with a grain of salt, I do think it's worth asking ourselves what if they're even partially right? I personally am cautiously optimistic. Optimistic because as a longevity scientist, of course I want to eradicate diseases and have people live longer, healthier lives. But cautious because I know that longer lifespans will have a massive ripple effect, especially on our finances and life plans.
We all have to prepare for the very real possibility that we're going to live much longer than our parents or grandparents did. But it begs the question, if you don't die in the next decade of the usual age-related diseases and instead live much longer than expected, will your money last? Is your retirement plan built for increased longevity?
In other words, what's your wealthspan? Remember, if healthspan is how long your health lasts, wealthspan is how long your wealth lasts. Or more specifically, the number of years your wealth continues to support your lifestyle and maybe even have some money left over to leave a legacy. Today, we're pretty good at estimating lifespan and how much to save for retirement, but if advances in medicine come to fruition and we experience a big jump in longevity, that could really complicate things.
Traditional retirement planning assumes you're only going to live 20 to 30 years after you retire. Many rules of thumb, like the famous "4% rule" for withdrawals, were built around that kind of timeline. But what if you found yourself living 40 or 50 years after you retire? Already, financial experts warn that outliving our money due to an "unexpected" jump in longevity is one of the greatest challenges that retirees face today.
Living longer, healthier lives seems like a blessing until we realize that we're going to be living with the fear of running out of money. Many people are already living with this fear. For a 60-year-old woman today, there's already roughly a 10% chance she's going to live past 94. Those odds will only go up if medical breakthroughs accelerate. So how can we extend our wealthspan to match our lifespan? Part of the answer is probably going to lie in new financial strategies and products.
For example, we're already starting to see longevity insurance (or longevity annuities) come on the market. They're designed to kick in if you live beyond a certain age, say 85, and they'll pay you an income for life after that time period. The idea is you don't have to hoard a huge nest egg just in case you reach 100. Instead, an insurance product would cover the tail end risk of living longer. Such annuities can be remarkably cost effective because many people won't end up using them. Policies and markets are slowly adjusting. Even the US Treasury has tweaked regulations to encourage using retirement funds to buy longevity annuities. I mentioned this not to promote any product, but just to highlight how the financial industry is already starting to grapple with the reality of longer lifespans.
However, I think the biggest shift we're going to need to make is in our mindset about retirement itself. If you're in your 50s or 60s today, do you really expect to never earn another dollar after the age of 65? With potentially 30 to 40 years of life ahead, is it practical or even desirable to completely stop working? For many, the answer is increasingly no, and I don't think it's a bad thing. In fact, a growing number of people are continuing to work in some capacity, either by choice or necessity. Already 19% of Americans over the age of 65 are employed, compared to just 11% back in the mid-80s. So, retirement's already shifting from a hard-stop at age 65 to more of a gradual phase-out.
I think the massive leaps that are coming with AI and health longevity are going to force us to continue to flip the idea of retirement on its head. We've long viewed retirement as just this blissful period of not having to work anymore, playing full time. But perhaps we should view it as a period of working differently, on our own terms, at a different pace, or maybe even in a new field that excites us. I'm not suggesting we work indefinitely, but rather create an investment in cashflow strategy that's going to support us indefinitely.
I think the FIRE community, or the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement, actually offers us some lessons here. FIRE devotees, they already aim to save aggressively and then retire way earlier than their peers, sometimes in their 30s or 40s. But interestingly, "retire" for them rarely means playing golf all day and never working again. It usually means leaving a corporate 9-to-5 job to do something they find much more fulfilling, something that still cash flows though. For example, many will freelance or work a passion side-hustle or manage their rental properties. They focus on achieving financial freedom and flexibility more than simply never working again. Most do it because they crave the freedom to live where they want, how they want and have enough steady cash flow to support them while their assets keep growing indefinitely.
Isn't that what we all want, whatever age we retire? It's why I believe that we can learn a lot from the FIRE community. The goal is to secure enough financial flexibility to not have to rely on a traditional full-time job while staying engaged and earning income doing things you enjoy and find meaningful. Think about it like this. If your healthspan continues to stretch out, then completely cutting off work at any age, 65 or whatever, that's going to mean decades of missed opportunity to keep earning and contributing. When people retire early, they'll often say that they miss having a sense of purpose and the social aspects of work, not to mention the paycheck. And frankly, even just a small paycheck in your 70s or 80s would go a long way to extending your wealthspan.
The good news is after a lifetime of experience, you have a wealth of knowledge and talents. So why not tap into that? Many retirees leverage expertise consulting in a field they know well. Many even start new businesses. In fact, "Encore Entrepreneurs" over the age of 55 now account for over half of all US business owners. Makes sense. As we reach retirement age, we finally have the time, capital, and passion to launch that business idea we shelved earlier. And now with AI tools, it's becoming easier than ever for a single person or a small team to manage a business, one that used to require a large staff. The key to going forward though is to stay nimble. AI experts keep telling 20- and 30-something-year-olds that the jobs of tomorrow will be different, so keep learning new skills, be ready to pivot.
And guess what? The same advice applies at this stage of life. In fact, you already know how to be nimble because you've actually experienced massive changes and learned how to adapt. You experienced the leap from typewriters to computers, from rotary phones to smartphones. You've already proven that you can learn new technology. So embracing AI in your life is just another learning curve, isn't it?
But don't just learn how to use Grok or Chat2PT. Those large language models or LLMs, they're just one category of AI tool. Learn how to use other AI platforms as well. Maybe it's using an AI assistant to help you organize your schedule or health data, or leveraging AI-driven instruments to manage your investment portfolio, or AI-driven platforms to manage your short-term rental. These kinds of technologies can actually help you effectively manage your day-to-day work and finances real time. And platforms are literally getting better and better every week, so keep playing with them. Take the time to think about how to use them to solve a problem you didn't think was possible previously. I think it's mind-boggling what we've seen evolve in just the past two years.
Of course, if we think too much about the massive transformation that's coming, it can feel overwhelming, even dystopian. The knee-jerk reaction is to throw our hands up in defeat and leave it to the next gen to figure out. And yet, we are actively living history and groundbreaking change. The old playbook for life after 55 is being rewritten as we live it. We don't really have the luxury to ignore the fundamental shifts that are happening. Clinging to an old assumption like I'm just going to coast through a 20-year retirement on my savings, could lead to trouble if you actually end up living another 40 or 50 years. And it's going to be even more problematic if AI changes the world in ways that erode the value of those savings or make our skills obsolete. So we have to pay attention to what is happening and remain proactive. We aren't just passengers on this ride. We have agency in how we adapt.
Think of it this way. We're entering an age where it's possible we're going to live longer, healthier, and wealthier than any generation before. And the age is coming fast because our country is investing heavily like it did during the Eisenhower expansion. Our government's AI action plan explicitly says it wants to ensure American workers and families live and thrive in the AI era. We need to hold them to that, but we also need to take initiative ourselves to ride the tailwind.
We can update our skills easier than ever before. We can seek flexible work or volunteering that keeps us active and socially connected. We can use new AI tools for preventive health as well as financial planning. Bottom line, I encourage you to embrace a longevity mindset and to participate in this transformation. We're not just spectators while the younger folks deal with AI. We are very much a part of this story.
In fact, our generation has a lot to contribute to how all this plays out. We carry the memories of life before the internet, before cell phones, and that gives us valuable perspective on technology's promises as well as its pitfalls. We vote, and our votes influence policies on AI in healthcare and retirement. We have massive buying power too, and that drives companies to cater AI products to our needs. And many of us are still leaders in businesses or communities where we can advocate for responsible, ethical use of AI. The next few years are going to be fast-paced and of course sometimes bewildering, but I truly believe it can be a thrilling time to be creating your best Next Act.
Imagine having the health to pursue dreams you postponed and the technology to help you pursue them smarter and safer. Imagine not having to worry so much about "will I get cancer or dementia?" because maybe those become manageable or curable. And instead you can focus on how you'll make the most of the extra healthy decades you've been gifted. That's the optimistic part. The cautionary part is ensuring you're financially and mentally prepared for that gift of time. It might mean rethinking retirement from a permanent vacation into a dynamic phase of life with cycles of work, learning, and leisure. It might mean investing in new skills at 60 or adjusting your savings strategy or taking out longevity insurance or moving to be closer to family for support.
These are all manageable adjustments, especially if you do them proactively. The government's big push tells us that the age of AI is being fast-tracked, even more than it already was. It is a global "arms race" that will redefine society. But you and I get to decide how it redefines our lives. So let's stay nimble, stay curious, and keep reimagining what our Next Act can be. With a bit of planning and willingness to adapt, we can make those extra decades healthy, wealthy, and deeply fulfilling.
Until next time, my friends, live well, love more, age less.