The war in Ukraine has made Europe’s train troubles painfully obvious. Ukrainian wheat is stuck within the country’s borders because its trains can’t be ridden to a sea port. The most glaring problem lies in the tracks, as Europe uses six differently-sized tracks. There’s no easy fix for this problem. Although some tracks can accommodate two railway sizes, it’s not possible to have them all at once. Converting the tracks to the standard size is expensive and continuing with the old way of changing wheels is incredibly time-consuming and impractical. 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
