The advancement of technology and shifts in occupations affect more aspects of our lives than we think, like the names we give to our hand injuries. Mother’s thumb is one example of a hand injury’s name evolution. The injury, which was caused by outstretched thumbs, was originally called washer-woman’s sprain. As washer-women became rare, it became mother’s thumb because mothers were usually carrying babies with outstretched thumbs, then designer thumb, Blackberry thumb, gamer’s thumb and now texter’s thumb, as texters position their hands similarly, leading to the same injury. 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
