Death Clock, a new app on the block, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine when a user will die. It is available for both Android and iOS as a free app. It asks users to fill out a questionnaire and guesses people’s life expectancy on the basis of the answers provided. Despite its morbid overtones, the app brands itself as “AI-powered longevity” and shares personalised recommendations to improve users’ life expectancy and delay the predicted death by suggesting healthier habits.
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AI-Powered Death Clock App
The Death Clock app is available on both the App Store and Play Store, however, it can currently only be downloaded in the US. Its app listing on the Play Store states that it uses “advanced AI technology” to help people understand how their habits can influence their life expectancy and guide them towards healthier choices.
Notably, apps and websites similar to Death Clock that predict when a person might die have existed since the early 2000s, but most of these platforms used actuarial life tables to calculate a person’s death date. However, as per a Bloomberg report, the Death Clock app’s developer highlighted that the AI used was trained on a dataset of more than 1,200 life expectancy studies with approximately 53 million participants.
Brent Franson, the developer, also told the publication that the AI seeks data from the user about diet, exercise, stress levels, and sleep to make the final prediction. As per Franson, this results in a more accurate death day prediction compared to traditional methods that use life tables.
While downloading the app and getting a prediction is free of cost, users can also pay $40 (roughly Rs. 3,400) to get a personalised recommendation to improve certain habits to increase life expectancy and delay the impending doom. The annual subscription fee also adds a clock that counts down to the user’s predicted death.
Notably, the developers did not share details about the AI model used to predict this information or highlight the architecture it is based on, which raises some concerns about its reliability. Still, this app can be a useful tool for those who want to understand how certain behaviour can put their bodies at a higher risk of dying and ways to change them.
