Ethan Mollick builds 'Ghost Census' with Opus 5.5, counting the dead within 100m of you
emollick · x · 2026-10-31
For Halloween, Ethan Mollick asked Opus 5.5 to suggest a spooky project based on his existing work, yielding the Ghost Census website: pick any location and it estimates how many people died within 100 meters of it across all history up to 1926, out of roughly 55 billion 'century-old dead'.
- Shows per-km² death density, historical rulers of the spot and how many died under their rule, plus randomly drawn register entries typical of the era (modeled averages, not real individuals)
- Location type is inferred in-browser from OpenStreetMap buildings; nothing is stored or uploaded
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