The prospect of learning one’s death date may no longer be confined to the realms of science fiction, as recent advancements in artificial intelligence bring the possibility closer to reality. Dubbed the “doom calculator” by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, an innovative AI algorithm has demonstrated a remarkable accuracy rate of over 75% in predicting individuals’ mortality within a four-year timeframe.
This groundbreaking project, a collaborative effort between researchers in Denmark and the U.S., was detailed in a recent publication in the Nature Computational Science online journal. Employing an AI machine-learning transformer model akin to ChatGPT, the researchers developed a system named life2vec. While users can’t interact with it as they would with ChatGPT, life2vec successfully processed data from over 6 million individuals in Denmark, with the government supplying detailed information on various aspects such as age, health, education, employment, income, and life events.
The training process involved teaching life2vec to comprehend information about individuals’ lives conveyed through sentences, such as “In September 2012, Francisco received 20,000 Danish kroner as a guard at a castle in Elsinore” or “During her third year at secondary boarding school, Hermione followed five elective classes,” as described in the research paper.
As life2vec evolved, it demonstrated the capacity to construct “individual human life trajectories,” essentially capturing the comprehensive narrative of a person’s life. Sune Lehmann, a professor of networks and complexity science at the Technical University of Denmark and lead author of the paper, compared a human life to “a giant long sentence of the many things that can happen to a person.”
The study’s findings open avenues for further exploration into the potential applications and ethical considerations surrounding mortality prediction using AI. The algorithm’s ability to forecast individuals’ life expectancy within a four-year window raises questions about its impact on healthcare, life insurance, and personal decision-making.
While this groundbreaking development showcases the remarkable capabilities of AI, it also invites contemplation on the ethical implications and societal repercussions of such predictive technologies. The delicate balance between technological advancement and individual privacy, along with potential misuse of mortality predictions, underscores the need for thoughtful consideration and regulatory frameworks as society navigates the uncharted territory of AI-driven doom calculators.