The Death Algorithm — Will Google Influence Your Lifespan?

Author: Nikki Williams

Date: July 17, 2018 

Link: https://www.digitalethics.org/essays/death-algorithm-will-google-influence-your-lifespan

First Impressions: By looking at the title, The Death Algorithm, Lifespan, and Google most certainly means that Google found an algorithm that somehow predicts the lifespan of people.

Quote: “Now that Google’s AI has opened the Pandora’s box of little evils associated with our most intimate data, we’re already at risk of being wronged at a number of levels.”

Reflection: 

The technology being developed at our current age is getting extremely complicated as time goes by. As technology becomes more complicated, people tend to give up trying to figure out how these work since they do not understand how to use it. With people not knowing how to use these technology, it is easy for them to accept anything that it asks, including using these people’s data for statistics or for monitoring, and just go on with their lives without them knowing what it can do to the data they provided for this machine.

When reading the essay about Google’s Death Algorithm, I was surprised at the section where  the writer talks about how Google uses people’s information for their algorithm or AI to be accurate at computing a patient’s death according to the number of visits this patient has had. The question that came into my mind was “How Google came up with this kind of technology and why would they want machines/AI telling us when we will die”? Some may want this kind of technology implemented in hospitals since it would be easier to prepare for someone’s death and be able to handle whatever is needed on time. But I do not think this is a good idea since it could cause a patient’s life to shorten or in extreme instances, death, by knowing when he/she will die, it may cause emotional stress the moment he/she finds out about it.

5 Things I Learned:

1. Google feeds medical data of patients to its AI

2. Google is invading patients privacy

3. The big companies care only about money.

4. Google’s medical AI is able to predict death of patient based on medical records.

5. FitBit shares its data with Google’s Cloud Healthcare API

5 Integrative Questions:

1. Will there be a time where in different AI will be able to share information and will know every single detail about us?

2. Were the patients aware of Google using their data for their AI?

3. What is Google’s secret of achieving such an accurate prediction of one’s death?

4. Will this kind of technology be accepted in countries other than United States, and for what reason will they accept it for?

5. What is the best country to implement Google’s Death Algorithm?