If you write, you may be tempted to make your main characters good, strong, and pretty—not perfect, but rather unflawed. But that’s boring. If you don’t understand why, then maybe you should play Dungeons and Dragons. Writer Rob Blair Young used to cheat by lying about his dice rolls to make his characters near-perfect in D&D. But after playing with an accidental “flawed” character, he realised the best journeys aren’t about perfect characters smashing through problems, but about ordinary people who become extraordinary after rising to the challenge. Read full article here
Societal Issues
AI Predicts Crime A Week In Advance With 90 Per Cent Accuracy
An artificial intelligence model built by Ishanu Chattopadhyay and his colleagues analysed crime data in Chicago from 2014 to 2016 and managed to predict future levels of crime down to the nearest 300 metres, a week before they actually happened. While extremely useful, this artificial intelligence has been shown to expose racial prejudice in law enforcement. Hopefully, as the study’s data and methodology have been made available for others to evaluate, these prejudices can be avoided in the next iteration. Read full article here
Merv
August 15, 2022
