The introduction of Facebook’s Like and Share and Twitter’s Retweet feature between 2009 and the early 2010s became the dart guns by which extremists silenced moderates. The outrage-inducing posts of political extremists were promoted because people shared emotionally charged content. The vitriol that members of the far right and the far left exude in their thought-policing seemed more visible, discouraging nuanced thinkers from speaking up. By shooting down their more thoughtful members, extremists created a political system hostile to compromise. 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
