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From Phoebus to witches to death clocks: why we are taking predictive technologies to the extreme

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Abstract

In the following article, I shall focus on emerging technologies that increasingly try to predict our death, i.e. when we will die and from what cause. More precisely, I shall focus on the possible answer to the following philosophical question: why are we taking predictive technologies to the extreme? First, I shall reflect upon the results of recent empirical research. Second, I shall address the issue of taking predictive technologies to the extreme, i.e. predicting one’s death, through philosophical tools, from thought experiments to a philosophical perspective on the possible key reason why we are using emerging technologies’ unprecedented power of prediction to improve more and more our knowledge of when we will die and from what cause. The philosophical answer I propose is the following: even death clocks, together with other kinds of emerging technologies that gain an unprecedented power of prediction, may somehow save us by reactivating our sensemaking whenever our life is uncertain and demanding to the point that we cannot face our open future by planning and acting by ourselves. If it is true that the price we pay, i.e. a kind of automation of our own future, is extremely high, it is also true that, in our unprecedentedly uncertain and demanding time, autonomous sensemaking seems to scare us even more.

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Notes

  1. As far as the case of predicting artefacts’ performances is concerned, which I shall not address in what follows, digital twins should be especially considered (see at least Glaessgen and Stargel 2012 and Grieves 2014 as seminal publications).

  2. As far as technological development’s increasing focus on prediction is concerned, see at least Siegel 2012 (also offering a rather exhaustive list of instructive cases in point), Agrawal et al. 2018 and 2022, Tulchinsky 2022 and Tulchinsky and Mason 2023.

  3. As representatives of the philosophical debate of the last decades.

  4. I extensively worked on the relationship between nonprofessionals and epistemic validity in Chiodo 2020.

  5. See at least the following websites as instructive cases in point: https://www.death-clock.org/, http://www.deathclock.com/, https://thedeathclock.co/ and https://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/death_clock.asp.

  6. Even the title of Mary Shelley’s novel is literally Frankenstein, or, the modern Prometheus.

  7. “And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die’”.

  8. “Only Tiresias, on whose cheek the down was just darkening, still ranged with his hounds the holy place. And, athirst beyond telling, he came unto the flowing fountain, wretched man! And unwillingly saw that which is not lawful to be seen. And Athena was angered, yet said to him: ‘What god, o son of Everes, led thee on this grievous way? Hence shalt thou never more take back thine eyes!’”.

  9. “I [Socrates] am wiser than this man [considered wisest]; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either”.

  10. “Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason”.

  11. “Philosophy sets limits to […] what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought”.

  12. Rousseau (1997 [1761], 578) lingers on details: “the use she made of her last moments, her words, her sentiments, her soul, all that belongs to Julie alone. She did not live like other women: no one, so far as I know, has died as she did. […] an instant. Without attributing great importance to her illness, she foresaw that it would prevent her for some time from fulfilling her share of that same care, and instructed us all to divide up that share in addition to our own. She expatiated on all her plans, on yours, on the means most apt to bring them to fruition, on the observations she had made and which could favour or thwart them, in short on everything that would enable us to compensate for her maternal functions for as long as she were obliged to suspend them”.

  13. In the case of Germany (the case of Spain is also tested). Note that 8.2% are uncertain (see Gigerenzer and Garcia-Retamero 2017, 186).

  14. In the case of Germany (the case of Spain is also tested). Note that 6.4% are uncertain (see Gigerenzer and Garcia-Retamero 2017, 186).

  15. As far as the relationship between shame and identity is concerned, Williams 1993 is illuminating.

  16. I extensively worked on trading human autonomy for technological automation in Chiodo 2023a and 2023b.

  17. As far as sensemaking is concerned, I mean what is generally described as what starts with a rationalisation of one’s actions (see, for instance, Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld 2005). Other references may be considered to further reflect on the contemporary notion of sensemaking (even though the length of the article necessarily limits my possibility to develop them in what follows), especially at the intersection between phenomenology and cognitive sciences, starting with enactivism’s contributions (see, for instance, Durt et al. 2017, Vörös 2017, Di Paolo 2021 and Marin 2022). Also, contributions that may be complementary to the rationalisation on one’s actions proposed by Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld 2005 can be found in Solomon 1993, as far as the relationship between sensemaking and emotions is concerned, and in Andersen et al. 2020, as far as the relationship between sensemaking and social sciences is concerned.

  18. On the general issue of achievement subjectivity, see at least Han 2015.

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Curmudgeon Corner

Curmudgeon Corner is a short opinionated column on trends in technology, arts, science and society, commenting on issues of concern to the research community and wider society. Whilst the drive for super-human intelligence promotes potential benefits to wider society, it also raises deep concerns of existential risk, thereby highlighting the need for an ongoing conversation between technology and society. At the core of Curmudgeon concern is the question: What is it to be human in the age of the AI machine? -Editor.

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    Simona Chiodo

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Chiodo, S. From Phoebus to witches to death clocks: why we are taking predictive technologies to the extreme. AI & Soc (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01821-y

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