Early humans may have hunted their way to a larger brain size. A new paper proposes that after hunting large prey to extinction, humans had to take on various adaptations —such as language, sophisticated tool use, and dog domestication — to hunt smaller prey efficiently; all of which requires more brainpower, and thus bigger brains. The researchers suggest that our brains grew larger as prey grew smaller, only stabilizing after the Agricultural Revolution. 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
