Danish Researchers Built an AI That Predicts When You'll Die With 78% Accuracy — and Refused to Release It

Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark trained an AI model called 'life2vec' on the health records, income, education, and social history of 6 million Danish citizens. The model could predict whether a person would die within 4 years with 78% accuracy — significantly better than existing actuarial models. When the results were published in Nature Human Behaviour in late 2023, the researchers explicitly refused to release the model publicly, citing the risk of use by insurance companies to deny coverage, employers to screen candidates, and the psychological harm of people knowing their death timeline. It promptly became one of the most-discussed AI ethics stories of the year.