Should AI be used to make death predictions?

By Sunil Saxena
The business of predicting death has found a new merchant: AI. So far, astrologers had a monopoly on death predictions. Armed with astrological charts and planetary positions they made death predictions for all mortals who wanted to know when they will die.

Then came the algorithms. In 2006 The Death Clock made its appearance. You were asked to input your date of birth, sex, smoking habits, your BMI and the country you live in.  Since then, 49,843,247 humans have used the death calculator, and it is still counting.

Thecalculator.co was another such death calculator. However, its makers made it clear that the “The death calculator was designed for entertainment purposes ONLY and not to influence people in any negative way. “

The algorithm based its predictions on the following data: date of birth; gender; country; smoking status; any heart disease status; sleeping well status; drinking alcohol status; other major diseases status; lifestyle status; personality.

Now it is the turn of AI-based algorithm. The research is making waves across the world since last week when the French news service AFP released a news report titled “How long you got? Danish AI algorithm aims to predict life, and death.” The report was published on almost all news portals across the world.

According to the news report, “Researchers in Denmark are harnessing artificial intelligence and data from millions of people to help anticipate the stages of an individual’s life all the way to the end, hoping to raise awareness of the technology’s power, and its perils.”

The creators of life2vec want to use data science to predict a wide range of health and social “life-events”, not just how long a person would live.

Speaking to AFP, Professor Sune Lehmann, who teaches at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), told AFP that the possibilities are endless. The programme can predict a range of health outcomes. It could predict fertility or obesity, or who will get cancer or who will not. For the material minded, it could also predict who will make a lot of money.

The database of life2vec project is massive. The researchers are working with data of almost six million Danes that they obtained from the official Statistics Denmark agency.

The data is being mined by an algorithm which is similar to that of ChatGPT, and the results are stunning. The researchers say that when it comes to predicting death, the algorithm is right in 78 percent of cases.

So what do the researchers do? According to Prof Lehmann, “We look at early mortality. So we take a very young cohort between 35 and 65. Then we try to predict, based on an eight-year period from 2008 to 2016, if a person dies in the subsequent four years.”

The reason they have chosen this bracket is because in this age range “deaths are usually few and far between”. The researchers hope that this will help them verify the reliability of the algorithm.

The researchers also clarify that the tool is not yet ready for use outside a research setting.

“For now, it’s a research project where we’re exploring what’s possible and what’s not possible,” Lehmann told AFP.

Can this research be a reason for Yamaraj to worry?

The more pertinent, question, however, is: Should AI be used to make death predictions?

Share your views in the comment box below.

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