Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease that slowly kills off a patient’s motor neurons, reducing their ability to move, talk, and eat until they become fully paralysed. Wanting to continue communicating with their loved one, a German man’s parents approached scientists at the University of Tübingen to give him a new means of communication after he lost all control of his muscles. They implanted a chip in his brain that interprets his brain waves into inputs, allowing him to spell out words and form sentences with his thoughts. 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
