Science & Technology

Artificial intelligence knows when you will die

By T.K. Randall
March 30, 2019

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) The opportunity to learn how long you might have left on this mortal coil is certainly not for everyone, but for doctors looking after hospital patients, a prediction of someone's mortality can offer benefits ranging from improved end-of-life care to ensuring loved ones are informed well in advance.

At the forefront of this technology is Google's Medical Brain artificial intelligence which determines how long a patient has left to live by scrutinizing every little detail of their medical record.

In a recent study, the system's predictive algorithm attempted to determine when patients would die in two separate hospitals - achieving impressive accuracy rates of 93 and 95 percent."This was significantly more accurate than the traditional predictive model," the researchers wrote. "These models outperformed traditional, clinically-used predictive models in all cases."

"We believe that this approach can be used to create accurate and scalable predictions for a variety of clinical scenarios."

While the technology is no doubt impressive, critics have raised privacy concerns regarding the system's access to personal information. Back in 2013, for instance, Google's DeepMind AI was granted access to the medical records of 1.6 million NHS patients.

It's certainly not outside the realms of possibility that in the not-too-distant future, Google's AI and others like it will know more about us than we know about ourselves.

Source: Independent

Tags: Google, Artificial Intelligence