AI's ability to predict death may not be as scary as it sounds

livemint.com:

When headlines recently said that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to create a ‘death calculator’ that predicts the day you’ll die, it sounded like something from a terrifying science fiction story. The reaction showed how readily people believe that AI has magical fortune-telling powers. The reality was not as far-fetched.

The paper that spawned the fracas, in Nature Computational Science, did involve using AI to predict death, but it wasn’t very precise. Using both economic and health data on thousands of people in Denmark, an AI-based system was able to predict with about 78% accuracy which people would die within the next four years. The algorithms used to create actuarial tables already do this kind of statistical forecasting, but the new system, called life2vec, is more accurate and works in a different way.

The lead author on the paper, University of Copenhagen complexity science professor Sune Lehmann, said life2vec predicts life events much the way ChatGPT predicts words. This matters not because they might create a scarily accurate ‘death calculator,’ but because of how the forecasts could be used. Such algorithms could be used for ill, to discriminate or deny people healthcare or insurance, or for good, by highlighting factors that affect lifespan and helping us live longer.

Or they might improve lifespan calculations, which some people use to plan their retirements. It was “wild to see how the results were misrepresented," Lehmann said. “People said this AI can predict the second you will die with incredible accuracy." This is because people don’t understand the technology.