
A.I. And Big Data Could Power a New War on Poverty? - bcaulfield
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/opinion/ai-and-big-data-could-power-a-new-war-on-poverty.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region
======
rangersanger
AI will far more likely power a new war on the poor than power a war to fight
poverty. Through new ways to discriminate in lending/housing (1), and new ways
to discriminate in hiring (2), new ways to discriminate in policing (3.) AI
will be no boon to the poor. It will be a new tool for the wealthy to use math
as smoke screen for practices they have used for centuries to keep the poor
poor and the rich rich.

1)[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4x44dp/ai-
could-r...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4x44dp/ai-could-
resurrect-a-racist-housing-policy) & [https://www.americanbanker.com/news/is-
artificial-intelligen...](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/is-artificial-
intelligence-a-threat-to-fair-lending) 2)[http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/economy/article/2112786/u...](http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/economy/article/2112786/updated-laws-needed-hong-kong-can-embrace-
artificial) 3) [https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-
assessm...](https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-
in-criminal-sentencing)

~~~
saas_co_de
I am not sure exactly how you would fight a "war on poverty" without also
fighting a "war on the poor."

This is some "we are going to invade your country and force you to be free"
level Orwellian thinking.

~~~
rangersanger
By helping the poor out of poverty instead of strengthening the mechanisms
that put them there to keep them there.

I'm not sure how exactly that's Orwellian thinking, please explain.

~~~
mLuby
"War is Welfare" is fairly Orwellian.

------
meri_dian
This article is talking about analytics. Analytics will have a marginal impact
at best on reducing poverty. Of course people working in analytics have been
benefited by it through the income it has given them, but the cumulative
effects of analyzing data will not lead to some epiphany that will help us to
end poverty.

In order to bring about structural change of the scale needed to end poverty,
we need to reach levels of technology, productivity and social organization
that we have not yet reached today. We will not ascend to this level by
analyzing some set of socio-economic data. We will reach this point by
building machines that can do work for us and automating entire supply chains
so that labor no longer impacts production costs.

~~~
titzer
> In order to bring about structural change of the scale needed to end
> poverty, we need to reach levels of technology, productivity and social
> organization that we have not yet reached today.

They been sayin' this since the wheel, methinks!

Jesus said, "The poor will always be with you." Not being a Christian, I still
see the wisdom in this statement.

In wealth-oriented societies, rich people have been fighting a war to get rid
of poor people since the beginning of time--throw them in jail, lock them in
ghettos, deport them, wall them out. The structural change needed is in
people's attitudes, society's values, not our technology.

It's getting worse, not better, and the more hopes we pin on our techno-
fantasy, the harder the crash is going to be.

~~~
meri_dian
But you're leaving out the fact that the average person is much better off
now, materially, than they ever were in the past.

~~~
titzer
The average person might be a little better off than a decade ago, but the gap
between rich and poor keeps getting wider, and even worse, the poor are
actually getting poorer. If the rich get even richer, the average keeps going
up, well done!

------
Corence
_Second, we can bring what is known as differentiated education — based on the
idea that students master skills in different ways and at different speeds —
to every student in the country. A 2013 study by the National Institutes of
Health found that nearly 40 percent of medical students held a strong
preference for one mode of learning: Some were listeners; others were visual
learners; still others learned best by doing._

This study was a 100 person survey with no experimental evidence to back up
people's beliefs. I've been working with educators for a while, and they've
said that "learning styles" are just a myth with no solid evidence. All this
survey says is that people think they learn best via one method, but people
are notoriously bad at knowing what is an effective way of learning. In
surveys people overvalue the "intensity" of a learning experience [1], which
makes them think things like a 3-week bootcamp are more effective, when really
spaced repetition is a better use of time.

At least in the US, there are many easier ways we could improve our education
methods before resorting to ML-driven customization.

[1]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/114/37/9854.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/114/37/9854.full)

~~~
TheLegace
I don't really have experimental data to back this up. But after struggling
for my entire life until recently with learning this is the experience I have
had studying for my last course(after a decade of struggling to study).

I use to write everything down, it was the only way to retain whatever little
information that I was capable of retaining. I never had enough confidence to
NOT write everything. Realizing that all my abilities were impaired because of
improper cognitive development. I decided to start from scratch, having
nothing developed and picking one area that I was suited to. I have been
practicing reciting rap lyrics of Eminem and Nas(not really for any reason, it
was just fun). What I realized is that now my ability to recall information
was significantly improved at least from a verbal learning style perspective.
And it only took a few months develop. While studying for my final I went back
to my old habits of writing every single detail down and realizing I will
never have enough time to write it all down. So I started reciting knowledge
the same way I would recite rap lyrics and I retained EVERYTHING. I have never
studied so little, yet I aced my exam got an A in the course and was proud.

Moral of the story is that people are different, and while most people may
learn from one method, it doesn't mean they will have that capability
developed at the time they need it. So they have to learn to adapt with what
is available to them.

edit: I will add that again poverty is the source of all this. My parents grew
up in severe poverty and never were able to develop these skills properly and
I had to suffer because of that.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Mind if I ask what was responsible for your "improper cognitive development"?

~~~
TheLegace
Very complicated issues, but mostly traumatic childhood of my parents which
was mirrored by my brain and had to be undone before any serious cognitive
development could happen. Trauma = Disassociation = Brain functions become
disconnected and do not work properly. It becomes harder when you have to
bootstrap your brain to work well and you are basically starting over 20 years
later than everyone.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _Disassociation_

Interesting. Do you mean like depersonalization and/or derealization?

~~~
TheLegace
It is probably all of the above. It is the umbrella term that covers
everything.

------
kevin_b_er
I doubt it will help to combat poverty.

It will be used as a tool by the rich to extract more money and increase
poverty.

Who will wield these AI tools that is supposed to be used to fight poverty?

Corporations are for-profit and a corporate sociopath cannot be concerned
about limiting profit to help the poor. They'll want to use AI as a new tool
to increase profits. This will come at the expense of the human populace at
large.

My government in the United States of America is rapidly falling to greed.
Corporations only act nominally concerned about the poor as a PR act to
prevent the rage of the populace from using government against them. Since my
government is even further down the slide into plutocracy than ever before,
this government will neither stop the greed-based corporate use of AI nor will
it use it to help the poor, because there's no money for their rich patrons in
helping the poor.

Even you want this magic AI tech to help the poor, who will do it? Where will
you get the data in the first place to feed into this A.I. and Big Data magic
machine? I argue the two sources above will not be a help in so far as they
might threaten the greed they exhibit.

------
jacquesm
The more likely outcome here is that AI and Big Data will be used to extract
some of the remaining funds that poor people have by tweaking business models
and marketing to become just that much more efficient.

------
V2hLe0ThslzRaV2
Poverty is a social issue, it has almost nothing to do with tech fundamentally
and tech normally only amplifies social beliefs, it rarely fixes them.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Indeed, it seems what we need to end poverty is more "heart" (empathy), rather
than mind (intelligence)

------
geggam
Can we quit having wars on things ? Everything we have a war against gets
worse.

~~~
sp332
It's not a real war. LBJ noted that war seems to get heaps of money shoveled
on it while basic domestic stuff goes unfunded. So declaring a war on poverty
is a way to anchor the amount of money spent up where people think of funding
wars instead of down where they think of funding welfare programs.

~~~
dang
All true, but I think geggam still has a point. What if framing these things
as wars is somehow part of why they don't work?

~~~
3131s
You might find this paper interesting, into explores the idea of framing
things as war:

[https://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/lakoff.johnson...](https://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/lakoff.johnson80.pdf)

There's a book from the same authors that contains a more expansive list of
metaphors and examples.

------
DoreenMichele
_But the condition of poverty often entails one or more of these realities: a
lack of income (joblessness); a lack of preparedness (education); and a
dependency on government services (welfare). A.I. can address all three._

Wow, and not in a good way. Reading that makes me apoplectic. My first
instinct is to write something full of swear words and insults that wouldn't
meet HN guidelines.

First, poverty is gendered. One of the things that drives poverty for women is
the cultural expectation that we provide caregiving to our own children and
other relatives essentially for free and that society owes us nothing for this
imposition on our time and energy. There are other factors, but that's a big
one.

The next thing that drives poverty is various intractable personal problems,
such as health issues, learning disabilities and mental health issues. One
thing society can do to reduce the degree to which such issues separate the
Haves from the Have Nots is to provide universal health care.

Dependency on government services is driven in part by poor design of services
such that getting on them actively cripples your ability to get off of them.
This entire article sounds like a snide way to blame poor people for their
problems rather than look for actual solutions.

I can't believe they say in the same article that a) jobs are outright going
away and b) the solution for unemployed people is superior job matching
services. If there are no jobs to get, you don't have a matching problem.

This is such utter drivel. Wow.

~~~
GhostVII
> One of the things that drives poverty for women is the cultural expectation
> that we provide caregiving to our own children and other relatives
> essentially for free and that society owes us nothing for this imposition on
> our time and energy. There are other factors, but that's a big one.

You have a source for that? I would think that the wage gap would be a much
more significant factor than cultural expectations. And I would hope that
people would provide caregiving to their own children for free.

~~~
DoreenMichele
There are many sources. Off the top of my head, you can look for books,
articles etc about _the feminization of poverty, pink collar ghetto_ and _the
second shift._ I have read far too many books (articles etc) over the course
of decades to remember them all.

 _And I would hope that people would provide caregiving to their own children
for free._

So would I. But why is it only _women_ are expected to provide such care and
are classified as _gold digging whores_ if they think the father should
provide for them while they do so and also provide some compensation into the
future for the lost career building opportunities it costs them? _Parents_
should both be responsible for the product of having gotten jiggy together,
not just _mothers._

~~~
gowld
In the USA, alimony and child support serve this purpose. Other developed
countries are similar, or have strong non-gendered social security.

In USA, while women are in poverty more than men, likely for the reasons you
highlight, women receive more social services than men, for those same
reasons. Homelessness disproportionately impacts men (by far), because woman
and children have more access to social services.

~~~
weberc2
According to [https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/adult-poverty-
rate...](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/adult-poverty-rate-by-
gender/), poverty rates between men and women are comparable; only 3%
difference. Also, besides poverty, I would expect a comparable expectation on
men to make up the deficit by working harder. I'm guessing the disparity is
really driven by a significant disparity between single mothers and single
fathers.

------
Top19
What this article describes is a terrible, confused, scary nightmare.

From the very first picture that begins the article on-down, Elizabeth Mason
advocates an absolutely frightening system that is made even more scary by how
she comes through as genuinely/naively believing in it all.

> Big data promises something closer to an unbiased, ideology-free evaluation
> of the effectiveness of these social programs. We could come closer to the
> vision of a meritocratic, technocratic society that politicians from both
> parties at state and local levels — those closest to the practical problems
> their constituents face — have begun to embrace.

First, meritocracy was first brought up as a joke by the author who coined the
term. Second, who is advocating for this “technocratic vision” short of
Silicon Valley CEOs? This “vision” of centralized, unbiased analysis by top-
notch planners was what we had in Vietnam or with GOSPLAN in the USSR, not
what we need now.

Third, AI works fast, which means even if it’s 75% less “ideological” or
whatever, it’s rate of speed is so fast that it will magnify any and all
biases that might be lurking inside. To imagine that it is unbiased is crazy,
let alone to think that it wouldn’t be used to some horrible malevolent end
(cough _China_ cough).

This article made me sick, but it was so uplifting and wonderful to see all
the other negative reactions on here and that this is not representative of
HN.

------
zzzeek
Unemployment is only at around 4% right now, extremely low. Want to take a
huge bite out of poverty? raise the minimum wage and increase benefits so that
folks don't need to work three jobs just to pay their rent. no AI robots
needed. just garden variety wealth redistribution that's sorely needed.

~~~
Danihan
Raising the minimum wage will simply result in jobs being replaced by kiosks.

Not that it won't happen soon anyway, but why hasten it.

~~~
zzzeek
Here, argue with the Economic Policy Institute regarding this very basic and
widely recognized economic fact: [http://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-
workers-poverty-...](http://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-workers-
poverty-anymore-raising/)

~~~
neuronexmachina
The EPI piece actually doesn't address the other commenter's point in any way.

------
RickHull
There will be a big hurdle of _political correctness_ when the machine spits
out answers that don't conform to establishment dogma -- e.g.
[https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/02/machine-learning-and-
human...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/02/machine-learning-and-human-bias-
an-uneasy-pair/)

Chris Stucchio writes about this in depth:
[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_and_discriminatory_algorithms.html)

~~~
matt4077
Those issues aren't different, morally, than good old-fashioned _racial
profiling_ , or really any other discriminatory use of stereotypes.

If you're cheering for _guilt by association_ to make a comeback just because
the evil establishment thinks it's a bad idea, I'm at a loss of words. Any
other fundamental freedoms you'd like to abolish because smart people happened
to think they are good ideas? Presumption of innocence? Habeas corpus? The 5th
amendment? Suffrage?

~~~
RickHull
> _If you 're cheering for guilt by association to make a comeback just
> because the evil establishment thinks it's a bad idea, I'm at a loss of
> words._

I'm not cheering for anything. I'm pointing out that machines may have a
distasteful view of the world and that this will be a stumbling block for
using them effectively.

> _Any other fundamental freedoms you 'd like to abolish because smart people
> happened to think they are good ideas? Presumption of innocence? Habeas
> corpus? The 5th amendment? Suffrage?_

I'd appreciate it if you could tone down the hysterical moral outrage,
particularly when aimed in my direction.

~~~
matt4077
My outrage isn't directed at your moral failings,which are unfortunately all
too common, but at your intellectual failures.

You are misrepresenting the status quo when you're insinuating that some
"establishment" conspiracy will be suppressing the usefulness of violating
fundamental rights, such as assumption of innocence, in their quest to defend
"political correctness".

This is obviously wrong. Such rights, and others like privacy or the right to
a fair trial, only make sense under the assumption that their violation would
in some ways benefit law enforcement. Otherwise there'd be no need to protect
them.

While the argument that, for example, "torture doesn't work" is sometimes
made, it is always secondary to "our civilisation is better than that, and it
is strong enough to accept a (small) hit in effectiveness in the defence of
fundamental rights".

So when you believe you've stumbled onto some greater truth, and that the
world needs to hear some tough talk of realism, you've simply missed the
essential message of enlightenment, and are reverting to 16th-century morals.

~~~
RickHull
> _My outrage isn 't directed at your moral failings,which are unfortunately
> all too common, but at your intellectual failures._

Would you care to enumerate the moral failings of mine which you have
identified? Or is this just an indiscriminate attack?

> _You are misrepresenting the status quo when you 're insinuating that some
> "establishment" conspiracy will be suppressing the usefulness of violating
> fundamental rights, such as assumption of innocence, in their quest to
> defend "political correctness"._

I have made no such statements nor insinuations. There is no conspiracy. If
this is the only such intellectual failure of mine which you have
(mis)identified, then I suggest you recalibrate your moral outrage meter and
try a less scattershot approach to fighting ideas and messengers which make
you uncomfortable.

As to the rest of your statements, I think I agree with them mostly. We should
not violate fundamental rights including the presumption of innocence
particularly. I agree with prohibitions on torture on moral grounds and not
simply consequential grounds.

I have not missed the essential message of the Enlightenment and in fact
uphold such ideals as a core part of my identity. So in summary, I reiterate
my concern that your outrage is indiscriminate and scattershot, and you have
misunderstood my position and statements.

------
jasonmaydie
I admire the authors optimism but this is just another wishy washy article
that someone seems to to have thought up while sitting on the toilet.

 _Her_ main points are, while AI will put people out of jobs "big data" can
help match people who lots jobs with all the unfilled positions we have (like
picking fruits in a field or bathroom cleaning or something like that).

AI can help "tutor" our kids so teaching can be tailored to each child/person
without lobbing us into classrooms with the same curriculum

and lastly, it will help distribute welfare services efficiently (or
something)

~~~
randoonhere
The author is a woman

------
dang
Despite the consensus that the article is pretty bad, the discussion here is
pretty good (edit: or at least was to begin with). For a hot-contro
submission, that's rare. So instead of downweighting the post itself, I'm
going to leave it unpenalized except for a question mark of protest in the
title.

------
lsc
Eh, if jobs are going away, we need more jobs more than we need matchmaking
for existing jobs. I can tell you from personal experience that there is a
huge difference between working when there are more jobs than qualified
workers and working when there are more qualified workers than jobs, and the
humane way to balance that equation in favor of us workers is to create more
jobs.

(It is interesting, though, because who is qualified is a subjective thing;
either to the whims of a human manager, or whatever hidden statistical
correlation the ML algorithm found. Right now, my impression is that standards
are much higher for new grads than when I broke into the industry, and much
lower for the higher end jobs that I now compete for.)

Which isn't to say that the matchmaking problem isn't difficult or important
or interesting, but it's certainly not the whole of the problem.

(Also, where I am, my employer pays a rather large cut of what I earn to the
matchmaker. like 30% though it varies a lot, as far as I can tell. Rather more
than I pay in rent. At my end of the market, my marginal dollars are devalued
to the point where I'm still making a really good living on my 70%... but if I
was making a lot less, that 30% could really matter. From that perspective,
inserting a matchmaker into the low end might contribute to the further
impoverishment of the poor.)

------
rdudekul
The article seems a little shallow. Many questions are left unanswered. Just
projecting where the future jobs will be OR customizing learning based on
preferable modes of learning, probably will NOT eliminate poverty. Universal
basic income along with more humane policies could help.

~~~
bcaulfield
Love the comments on here. I posted this article not because I agree with the
article's take, but because I wanted to see what the HN community thinks of
the article (and the topic). I haven't been disappointed!

------
balance_factor
There are two sides in every war, and in the war on poverty, those fighting to
create and preserve poverty currently hold most of the cards.

Harken back to 2000 and let us read the business press...I will pick one
article by example (
[http://money.cnn.com/2000/05/05/economy/employ](http://money.cnn.com/2000/05/05/economy/employ)
)...what does the article say?

"Joblessness at 30-year low...The U.S. unemployment rate tumbled to a 30-year
low of 3.9 percent in April, the government reported Friday, as worker-starved
companies raised wages and went on a hiring spree that created 340,000 new
jobs. But the good news for workers on Main Street sparked fears on Wall
Street"

What? Workers looking for a job being more easily able to get a job is
something that _sparks fear on Wall Street_ ?

"Still, the markets took the data in stride...The markets harbor no doubts of
the Fed's concerns over labor market tightness."

Both "the markets" and "the Fed" are concerned that so many people are
employed?

Basically this CNNfn article is saying, correctly, that Americans wanting a
job being able to get a job is something that is _feared_ by Wall Street,
"markets", The Fed etc., not something that is desired.

As that is the way the system is set up, and this is not the only business
press article or pronouncement of that time saying this, one has to be
skeptical of the desire for a "war on poverty". Because as it says, Wall
Street, "the markets", The Fed and most of the powers that be are deathly
afraid of that happening. They are in the business of preserving poverty, and
creating it when necessary.

Of course, this article was written by a corporation owned by people who feel
this way. So this is about as blunt an explanation as you're going to get from
them, or the mass media, which is completely owned and controlled by them. For
a clearer explanation of all of this from a source independent of that, you
might try consulting a source such as this -
[https://monthlyreview.org/2008/12/01/financial-implosion-
and...](https://monthlyreview.org/2008/12/01/financial-implosion-and-
stagnation)

------
metafrag
It would be awesome if people stopped talking about the alleviation of
societal ills by saying that people will "go to war" on them.

Poverty isn't something you war on. Poverty's something people are lifted out
of.

------
MechEStudent
Wars on poverty often become wars on poor people. I was there when Clinton
reduced max coverage to 2 years. It was a sentence of lifetime poverty for
people who had no option, and that was strongly enhanced by the "human glue".

~~~
gowld
War on Poverty was a Johnson program. You can't cite Clinton's _backing away
from_ War of Poverty as an argument against War on Poverty.

~~~
ttonkytonk
I think the idea here is that cutting benefits could be construed as part of
the War on Poverty by the argument that the benefits locked people into
poverty.

------
rm_-rf_slash
As excited as I am for the breathtaking advances in machine learning over the
past decade, I am equally displeased with the media’s mad rush to tout AI as a
magic elixir of the modern era.

Our societies have been constructed over a long period of time with gaping
inefficiencies. Case in point: the automobile. Yes, back when the alternatives
were capital-intensive railroads or poop-intensive stagecoaches, automobiles
offered unprecedented mobility. Yet in our blind rush towards our perceived
ideal of modernity, we built cities to satisfy the needs of the automobile
first, and people second, or last (thanks GM!).

Self-driving cars could make transportation easier, faster, and more
accessible, but it’s an awful lot of assumed progress that doesn’t factor in
the inherent and damaging inefficiencies of the automobile:

-Cities are built for cars. Wide streets make walking worse. When I spent a month in Rome I never needed to use a car because everything was so much closer to my front door.

-Suburbs are unsustainable. They require a scale of infrastructure (water, electric, gas, pavement, internet, etc) that is far more expensive per mile than in dense cities, and anybody whose home street has been pulverized to dust can tell you that there is simply neither money nor will to pay forward our expensive past mistakes.

-More roads suck. Anybody from car-centric cities (LA, ATL) knows that with massive 8 lane highways comes equally massive amounts of drivers. LA has highways everywhere and they’re basically always packed. Is that a sign of a working or a breaking system?

-Cars are expensive. People who need cars to work get tied into expensive loans which hamper their economic potential. And Uber is not even on the same planet of being close enough in price to replace ownership with access. If poor people didn’t need cars, they would be less poor. Poor people in the developed world who spend a great deal of their paychecks on transportation are the first world equivalent of the third world villager who spends most of their productive time securing fresh water for their families (which we take for granted comes clean out of the tap).

If we really want the world to improve, we cannot simply tweak the edges of a
broken system. Just the example of automobiles shows how fiddling with
algorithms only serves to further bake-in our structural inefficiencies. We
have to be willing to put anything and everything on the table for debate.

In short, we have to restructure all of our society to attain the lowest cost
of living for all people. Otherwise we will keep developing radical
technologies while scratching our heads and wondering why the poor keep
getting poorer.

------
akeck
Maybe. It’s also possible that self-interested parties will use AI to further
disenfranchise the poor. For example black box denial of access to a checking
account into perpetuity due to an AI-driven risk score.

------
colordrops
Is it so far fetched that perhaps the existence of so much poverty is
intentional, or at least caused by human action and inaction? The power
structures have a lot directly and indirectly invested in keeping the common
man down. With current technology and productivity, humans should be capable
of lifting even 20 billion people out of poverty but market inefficiencies
caused by corporate greed and border controls reduce that capability by orders
of magnitude.

------
Havoc
As they say, the cleverest minds are too busy trying to optimise ad clicks.

------
pasbesoin
I'm bad for only having read the headline, so far. But the only way I see this
playing out, is in a bad way, i.e. war on the impoverished.

Human history has a long and fairly consistent set of precedents. More and
more, the domestic U.S. from 1945 - circa 1980, appears to be the exception
rather than the rule. (An exception not equally shared and also purchased at
the price of some populations abroad, e.g. with respect to natural resource
extraction.)

------
skc
The only way this can succeed is if it can be proven that the rich and
powerful can become even more rich and powerful through the reduction of
poverty.

------
yakitori
Rather than focusing on poverty, I wonder if we should be focusing on wealth
disparity/inequality instead. It seems like reduction of poverty is being used
to distract from and even justify the increased wealth inequality. Reducing
poverty is a noble goal but the scary systematic problem to me is the ever
growing concentration of wealth amongst a tiny elite and the decline of the
middle class.

And I don't see how AI/machine learning + big data can decrease wealth
inequality when a small few control the data and the AI.

~~~
dashoffset
I fail to see how wealth inequality is a problem worse than poverty. I also
fail to see why we can't try to fix both poverty and inequality at the same
time.

------
partycoder
Well, so far AI is being used to squeeze more money from people.

Advertising, pricing, getting people to spend more time, etc.

~~~
robotresearcher
And on the other hand: spam filtering, web search, reducing power consumption
in data centres, reading MRI images, etc.

Good things.

~~~
partycoder
We all benefit from these products and services, but at a cost that we do not
always understand.

------
Shivetya
all your big Data A.I. matching of people to jobs won't amount to much because
lack of mobility keeps people in areas where there are no jobs.

I am very sure many unemployed would love to work if they could be where the
job is and be where it is I mean in the same town, something they could drive
or bus to.

------
undoware
Good lord.

This comment of mine is probably going to get deprecated down to -1 and
beyond, but it needs saying anyway:

We already have a perfectly good technology for combatting poverty. It's
called socialism.

How many people read this article on the way to work, on their expensive new
Christmas phones, absentmindedly stepping over homeless people they only semi-
see.

It's not the tech that's the problem. It's us. All of us. Shape up and start
giving your resources away. If you need specific recommendations, ask.

~~~
anonemouse145
How do homeless fare is socialist nations?

Hint: You might want to start looking in the mass graves.

(See also: The Scandinavian countries repeatedly having press conferences to
say no, we are not socialist.)

~~~
ttonkytonk
That's because they combine the welfare state with free market capitalism,
known as the "Nordic Model".

------
misterbowfinger
This is really petty, but the phrase "war on poverty" makes my emotional mind
think you're _against_ the poor, not uplifting the poor.

~~~
ynonym00s
hmm, it is a war on poverty, not on the poor.

~~~
lightbyte
The "war on drugs" wasn't a war on drugs, it was a war on drug users. I can
see why the OP was confused.

------
myaso
This is load of reasonable sounding horseshit. This tech is excellent at
extracting every drop of potential value that flows through organization
boundaries and little else (self driving cars aren't reality yet, when my
mother is in a self driving car my opinion will change) The thought of an
online system that can do this being bolted onto government IT systems on this
scale is hilarious, the bottleneck here isn't knowledge of AI or deep
learning. It is an idealistic future that fails to take into account all the
shit it will have to be built upon. I'll interpert the title in it's literally
sense -- another way for the poor to get fucked over by something they don't
understand!

