Primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal once said that chimpanzees were not moral beings and that animals don’t care about fairness unless they are experiencing injustice themselves. However, there are several observations that can be considered as evidence against Waal’s claim. Chimpanzees are observed to become agitated when they sense a disparity in rewards even when they are the ones benefitting from the arrangement; they refuse to work when another chimpanzee is getting “mediocre carrots” while they are getting tasty grapes. 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
