Artificial intelligence is no longer just about chatbots or self-driving cars—it’s now learning to predict the twists and turns in people’s lives.
A group of researchers from Denmark and the U.S. have built a model called Life2vec, which studies massive amounts of data about people—like where they live, their education, job history, salary, and health records. With this information, the AI can predict future life events with surprising accuracy, even estimating when someone might die.
How It Works:
The AI looks at a person’s life as a sequence of events, much like words in a sentence. For example: going to school, getting a job, moving houses, receiving a diagnosis. By studying millions of such “life sentences,” the model learns patterns and probabilities.
The research team trained Life2vec on data from 6 million people in Denmark collected between 2008 and 2020. When tested, it was more accurate than other advanced AI systems in predicting things like:
1.Chances of dying within four years: 2.Personality Traits: 3.Future job or income situation
What It Found:
The results matched what social scientists have long observed: 1.People with higher income or leadership positions tend to live longer. 2.Being male, working in certain skilled jobs, or having a mental health diagnosis increases the risk of early death.
The Big Questions:
While this technology sounds powerful, it also raises serious ethical concerns. Who should have access to such predictions? Could it be used unfairly by employers, insurance companies, or governments? What about the privacy of all this personal data? The researchers stress that these issues need to be addressed before such models are used in the real world. For now, the project is about understanding what can be predicted—not deciding people’s fates.
What’s Next:
In the future, the team hopes to include other types of information—like text, images, or social connections—to make the predictions even more detailed. This could open up new possibilities for healthcare, social sciences, and public policy, but it also makes the debate about ethics and privacy even more urgent.
