Can this AI Tool Predict Your Death? Maybe, But Don't Panic

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January 23, 2024

A startling new application of machine learning: predict when someone might die. A new machine learning model used birth dates, sex, employment, location and use of health care to predict--with up to 78 percent accuracy--the mortality of its test population. Read more about the peculiar way this learning model works in this week's top story.

Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor @AGawrylewski

Sociology Can this AI Tool Predict Your Death? Maybe, But Don't Panic Amid the machine-learning boom, model developers have built an all-purpose digital oracle from a trove of big data By Lauren Leffer

Artificial Intelligence AI Matches the Abilities of the Best Math Olympians Until now computers have failed to solve mathematical problems. But the AI program AlphaGeometry has succeeded in finding proofs for dozens of theorems from the International Mathematical Olympiad By Manon Bischoff

Medicine First-Ever Biorobotic Heart Helps Scientists Study Cardiac Function A model heart made from living tissue fused with robotic muscles could help researchers see how the organ works on the inside By Payal Dhar

Transportation Biden Pours $623 Million into Electric Vehicle Charging Void The Biden administration is doling out more money for charging infrastructure because range anxiety is considered a major challenge to Americans' widespread adoption of electric cars By David Ferris,E&E News

Public Health AI-Optimized Catheter Design Could Prevent Urinary Tract Infections without Drugs A 3-D-printed tube stymies microbes with a tiny obstacle course to combat rampant infections in hospitals By Joanna Thompson

Mathematics Tomorrow's Quantum Computers Threaten Today's Secrets. Here's How to Protect Them Researchers are racing to create codes so complex that even quantum computers can't break them By Kelsey Houston-Edwards

Transportation There Are Quicker Ways to Board a Plane--So Why Don't Airlines Use Them? These boarding methods are more efficient, but they come at a cost By Joanna Thompson

Pharmaceuticals AI Program Finds Thousands of Possible Psychedelics. Will They Lead to New Drugs? Researchers have doubted how useful AI protein-structure tool AlphaFold will be in discovering medicines—now they are learning how to deploy it effectively By Ewen Callaway,Nature magazine

Artificial Intelligence AI Safety Research Only Enables the Dangers of Runaway Superintelligence AI will become inscrutable and uncontrollable. We need to stop AI development until we have a necessary safety conversation By Tamlyn Hunt

FROM THE ARCHIVE AI Is Getting Powerful. But Can Researchers Make It Principled? Can researchers create AI algorithms that are ethical today—and will be safe in the future? By Mordechai Rorvig | April 2023

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