prediction

WTF Fun Fact 13667 – AI Predicts Life Events

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to push the boundaries of what we believe is possible – in fact, now AI predicts human life events.

A groundbreaking study recently revealed the potential of AI to forecast significant life occurrences with notable precision.

AI Predicts Life’s Complex Patterns

At the heart of this innovative research is a model known as “ife2vec.” This transformative AI tool was trained using vast amounts of data about people’s lives. This includes their residence, education, income, health, and work conditions. By employing ‘transformer models’ akin to the renowned ChatGPT, life2vec systematically organized this data to predict future events. This includes their time of death.

The researchers’ approach was to treat human life as a sequence of events, much like words in a sentence. This method allowed the AI to identify patterns and make predictions about future occurrences. Surprisingly, life2vec demonstrated a superior ability to predict outcomes such as personality traits and time of death compared to other advanced neural networks.

The Ethical Implications of Predictive AI

The promise of predictive AI in enhancing our understanding of life patterns is undeniable. But it also raises significant ethical questions. Issues around data protection, privacy, and potential biases inherent in the data are crucial considerations. Before such models can be applied in practical settings, like assessing individual disease risks or other significant life events, these ethical challenges must be thoroughly understood and addressed.

Looking ahead, the research team envisions incorporating various data forms into their model, such as text, images, or information about social connections. This expansion could revolutionize the interaction between social and health sciences, offering a more holistic view of human life and its potential trajectories.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Artificial intelligence can predict events in people’s lives” — ScienceDaily

WTF Fun Fact 12608 – Predicting the Future With Cheese

While the practice itself is not recorded in detail, at least one ancient source – Artemidorus of Daldis – refers to the practice of tyromancy, or predicting the future using cheese.

Humans have used all sorts of strange objects to try and read the future, including bones, tea leaves, and animal entrails. But we have to admit that cheese divination is new to us.

According to Mental Floss, the only recorded reference to tyromancy in the ancient world is from a skeptic, “the Greek diviner Artemidorus.” While he believed in divination, he “did not feel that cheese divination was very reliable, and included cheese diviners among his list of ‘false diviners,’ alongside dice diviners, sieve-diviners, and necromancers. (The interpretation of dreams and livers was far more dependable, he felt.)”

The practice of tyromancy involved reading the meaning of holes in a piece of cheese. In some cases, women would write the names of men on pieces of cheese, and the first to mold was thought to predict their ideal mate.

While there is scarce evidence for its practice, Ohio History Connection, a non-profit history organization, says:

“Tyromancy is the ancient art of divining the future through cheese, and has been used by various cultures around the world for centuries. By the 19th century, tyromancers would offer visitors a platter of different cheeses and determine their path based on which piece they were drawn to.”

Tyromancy is not the only cheese-based divination method. According to Interesly:

“Another method of Tyromancy was to write the possible answers to a question on separate pieces of cheese and then place them inside a cage along with a hungry rodent. Whichever piece the mouse ate first was the correct answer. This manner of divination was also a form of Myomancy.”

Frankly, we don’t expect to predict the future with cheese, but we’re not opposed to buying more cheese just in case. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Witchy Wheys: Cast Spells and Predict the Future with Cheese Witchy Wheys: Cast Spells and Predict the Future with Cheese” — culture

WTF Fun Fact 12406 – Turtle Senses Volcanic Eruption

Animals seem to know when something’s up with Mother Nature. Certain out-of-character animals behaviors after precede storms, earthquakes, and more. Now, there’s evidence that Milly the Sea Turtle knew that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano was about to erupt.

She was released by scientists in Australia wearing a tracker, and for 47 days she swam straight for the tiny island of Tonga. But the day before the earthquake, something made her do a sharp turn directly away from the island…like she knew it wasn’t a safe place.

While it’s just speculation, for now, Tilly also diverted her journey back to Australia right before a small earthquake occurred near the Great Barrier Reef. Again, she seemed to send something was about to go wrong in that direction.

Research has been done on the ability of whales, dolphins, and even goats to sense seismic activity, but this was the first time the behavior was observed in sea turtles.

Of course, turtles have no real way of explaining their behavior to humans, so we won’t be using Tilly as an earthquake or volcano predictor any time soon. But it is interesting to have more evidence that animals have some sort of sixth sense when it comes to potentially dangerous natural events. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: Tilly The Sea Turtle Knew About Tonga Eruption Before It Happened — IFL Science