Washington Tyne and Wear has a population of 67,085, and prides itself on its Old Hall (built by William de Hertburn in 1183), the "F" Pit Mining Museum (sounds like a hoot), and, of course, for being home to some fellow called John Washington, who sailed to Virginia to start a new life in 1656 (although he left from Northamptonshire via Portsmouth). But as you've probably guessed, Washington Tyne and Wear have an even more illustrious namesake in the former colonies: Washington DC, home to 690,000 people and the centre of the most powerful legislative and executive assembly on earth. Unlike the inhabitants of its old world namesake, though, the lives of DC citizens are currently being hyper-regulated, day in and day out, by an esoteric collection of twenty-nine new world algorithms.
With a firm focus north of M Street, DC's City Fathers are now routinely making use of Machine Learning to screen out undesirable applicants looking to rent a new apartment (shades of Jim Crow), as well as making dubious predictions on criminal recidivism, and working out whether (and which) high school students are most likely to drop out of class. In fact, more than a third of the City's machine-learning algorithms are now being used by agencies entirely dedicated to policing or criminal justice activities (www.epic.org). All of which might make the good people of Washington Tyne and Wear glad to stay relatively unsupervised because it's sure as heck not why John Washington took to the high seas in 1656.
But wait, not so fast … let's not be too hasty and start blaming the medium for the message.
Like all technological change, ever since Benjamin Franklin first tied a key to a kite, technical innovation is just as capable of being misused as it is to deliver sustainable social benefits: think of television for a starter…it brings us all closer together, that's for sure, but it also gave us Matt Hancock in the jungle. And television certainly isn't to blame for Matt Hancock. So too, Machine Learning isn't to blame for cyber snooping, despite dubious practices in Washington, DC.
Across the Globe, Governmental agencies are increasingly turning to complex Machine Learning algorithms to improve our lives: radially improving delivery efficiencies in critical areas such as housing, healthcare and transport. And it does all this by harvesting and harnessing the raw power of data most of us wouldn't think twice about.
For example, switching Continents and half a World away from DC (and Tyne and Wear), Prime Minister Modi's Government in India has revolutionised the Subcontinent's previously creaking and antiquated land registration system by introducing Machine Learning technologies. The same technologies are also making a real difference by delivering better disease diagnosis, pharmaceutical delivery, and, happily, environmental protection.
As Anand Rangarajan of Google India recently pointed out, none of this is likely to be confined to the Nation's borders either:
"The opportunity is huge and not constrained by location: a company in Bangalore or Gurgaon can now serve the whole world. In fact, a recent Accenture report concluded that by embracing AI technologies, India could add nearly $1 trillion to its GDP by 2035".
And that's saying something, given India is already the fastest-growing large economy on the Planet.
So, given another 250 years, John Washington would almost certainly have sailed east….
It's not the technology that matters so much, it's what we do with it…and despite well-founded criticism of some of the more dubious uses Machine Learning, and AI are currently being put to, they're also capable of changing all our lives for the better.