Sex-specific AI aging clocks outperform pooled models and surface signals they miss

bravo_abad · x · 2026-09-17

A look at biological aging clocks: because they learn a normative reference of 'normal' aging and measure deviation from it, how you pool data is a modeling choice. Training female and male clocks separately across organs and molecular measures generalized better than pooled models even with matched sample sizes and age distributions—and mattered beyond prediction: a genetic analysis linking sleep disorders to immune aging was significant in females but not in the sex-pooled model. Lesson for AI-for-Science: the reference population becomes part of the model.

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