First mentioned by American scientist Stuart Kauffman, the “adjacent possible” is the theory that everything possible today is the product of past events and activities. Steven Johnson posits that the “adjacent possible” is one of the key ingredients of innovation. He cites YouTube as a success rooted in the “adjacent possible”; it would not have been successful had it been launched more than 10 years ago because dial-up connections were too slow to handle video sharing at the time. 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
