While not all of the health, career, or lifestyle details of the study’s participants have been revealed just yet, what we do know is that being male, having a mental health diagnosis, and belonging to a skilled profession are some factors that mean you’re more likely to die early, according to the study, per The New York Post. Conversely, taking home a bigger paycheck or being the boss at your workplace meant you might live longer. The AI was also able to give clues about the participants’ personalities. The predictions were not shared with the participants.
Men have, historically, been thought to die younger than women, one of the reasons being their biological makeup and the fact that testosterone is linked with cardiovascular disease. Women have the benefit of estrogen which protects heart health and stronger immune systems than men, per Queensland Health. Premature death among those with mental illnesses is also not a new finding. In fact, people with mental health conditions are thought to die 20 years earlier than others worldwide, per a 2019 study published in The Lancet Psychiatry Commission.
Lehmann and his team hope to reveal more about the death-predicting AI algorithm while carefully respecting the participants’ privacy. “We are actively working on ways to share some of the results more openly, but this requires further research to be done in a way that can guarantee the privacy of the people in the study,” explained Lehmann (via Daily Mail). In the meantime, you can check out how the AI Death Calculator works for yourself.