Terrifying warning for anyone using the 'AI death calculator'
Whether you want to edit a photo or write an email more quickly, there are plenty of AI tools that can make your life a whole heap easier.
However, there are some new AI programs with much creepier aims, including one called Life2vec that says it can tell both how long you're likely to live and how rich you'll be later in life.
It's a bit sinister, but as you can probably imagine people are curious at what it might say. Unfortunately, this popularity turns out to have a dark side.
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The official Life2vec website has now been updated with a really important warning for anyone looking to use the service.
It says that hackers have started to create loads of copycat websites designed to fool people into giving away their personal details to give them access to their data.
The warning reads: "We are aware of Life2vec social media accounts, and there is at least one fraudulent website. We are not affiliated with these or any other entities that claim to use our technology."
That's pretty scary, so if you're interested in trying out Life2vec then you'll want to be really careful to make sure you're on the official website and no other. This is where you'll discover that Life2vec isn't actually available publicly - you cannot currently access it to find out about your own life expectancy.
It's a purely scientific tool for now, so there's absolutely no way for you to access it, which is why hackers have jumped in to pretend that they can actually get access to it.
Unlike some other AI tools, Life2vec has some really impressive data behind it, too - its model was built by using Danish health and demographic records for a large group of people aged between 35 and 65.
That gives it an absolute wealth of data to base its predictions on.
According to Life2vec, its model was able to predict the fates of these participants with up to 78.8% accuracy, which might not mean it's guaranteed to be correct every time, but is still impressive for an AI tool at this stage.
It apparently bases its predictions on data points including current income, their profession of choice and, of course, their medical history, to work out how long it believes the person in question will live for.
While that sounds really interesting, make sure you don't get fooled by a copycat website anytime soon - there's no timeline at all on Life2vec becoming available to the public, and anyone saying otherwise might be trying to scam you.