Ai to map, plan for and disperse climate refugees?

[chrisjones]

Could ai be employed to track and predict the movements, numbers, points of the congregation during their migration, and the humane dispersal of climate refugees within western countries?

[iNow]

What benefit does an AI bring to this? Those things are already being tracked and it requires little more than a pen, paper, and 6th grade level algebra. It’s not needed, and the people doing the planning often don’t care what the facts are. 

[chrisjones]

41 minutes ago, iNow said:

What benefit does an AI bring to this? Those things are already being tracked and it requires little more than a pen, paper, and 6th grade level algebra. It’s not needed, and the people doing the planning often don’t care what the facts are. 

"and the people doing the planning often don’t care what the facts are."  What do you mean INOW?

Just one observation about the initial premise of this discussion, I presume that most western countries will be able to cope with climate stress themselves. I would suppose that the extremes of heat in countries close to the equator may trigger mass climate migration and that relatively the average temperature in Europe would still be less extreme?

[chrisjones]

Ok...........no takers? I'll start the discussion off  :0)

We assume and I assume that Western countries will be capable of looking after their own populations and that climate refugees will travel to European nations from poorer nations to seek shelter. However, as is glaringly obvious in the UK for example our government has failed to foresee the acceleration of climate impacts and has failed in forward planning, and has been surprised by the need to adapt to new climate conditions. Such as failing to construct more water reservoirs and failing to upgrade the rail track system that now buckles in the heat during summer. And in Europe, they have to shut down the energy supplied to the grid from solar farms as they have failed to upgrade their grid systems in some nations for example.

With this in mind will they also fail in the forward planning for the predicted influx from mass climate migrations?

Could the use of a computer model that predicts the flows of these migrations in tandem with ai make the process of dispersing large numbers of climate refugees within European nations more efficient and humane? Or do we expect that our clunky and dysfunctional bureaucracies will complete the task efficiently?

 

[swansont]

14 minutes ago, chrisjones said:

Ok...........no takers?

!

Moderator Note

What? You had someone respond with requests for clarification, without which there really can't be a discussion.

You don't explain what you think AI brings to the table, nor do you bring any focus to what the distinction is between AI and current computer programming. You need to do a better job of framing the question.

 

20 minutes ago, chrisjones said:

in the UK for example our government has failed to foresee the acceleration of climate impacts and has failed in forward planning, and has been surprised by the need to adapt to new climate conditions. Such as failing to construct more water reservoirs and failing to upgrade the rail track system that now buckles in the heat during summer. And in Europe, they have to shut down the energy supplied to the grid from solar farms as they have failed to upgrade their grid systems in some nations for example.

What does this have to do with tracking and dispersing refugees?

[chrisjones]

1 minute ago, swansont said:

!

Moderator Note

What? You had someone respond with requests for clarification, without which there really can't be a discussion.

You don't explain what you think AI brings to the table, nor do you bring any focus to what the distinction is between AI and current computer programming. You need to do a better job of framing the question.

 

Ok thanks for the heads up, I was hoping for someone with a higher IQ than myself who is more qualified to take the discussion forward, however, I will attempt to explain the concept in more detail.

[mistermack]

"Climate Refugee" is a misnomer anyway. They would be climate migrants.

" refugee, generally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.[2"

wikipedia.

 

[swansont]

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

"Climate Refugee" is a misnomer anyway. They would be climate migrants.

" refugee, generally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.[2"

wikipedia.

 

"a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster"

(from whatever dictionary Google uses; emphasis added)

[chrisjones]

3 hours ago, chrisjones said:

Ok...........no takers? I'll start the discussion off  :0)

We assume and I assume that Western countries will be capable of looking after their own populations and that climate refugees will travel to European nations from poorer nations to seek shelter. However, as is glaringly obvious in the UK for example our government has failed to foresee the acceleration of climate impacts and has failed in forward planning, and has been surprised by the need to adapt to new climate conditions. Such as failing to construct more water reservoirs and failing to upgrade the rail track system that now buckles in the heat during summer. And in Europe, they have to shut down the energy supplied to the grid from solar farms as they have failed to upgrade their grid systems in some nations for example.

With this in mind will they also fail in the forward planning for the predicted influx from mass climate migrations?

Could the use of a computer model that predicts the flows of these migrations in tandem with ai make the process of dispersing large numbers of climate refugees within European nations more efficient and humane? Or do we expect that our clunky and dysfunctional bureaucracies will complete the task efficiently?

 

In the comment above which is located further up the thread I am explaining that we observe huge failings in the lack of foresight and lack of forwarding planning both generally but in the context of this thread particularly about preparedness and adaption to new climate conditions by governments around the globe. Scientists have warned governments about the coming challenges for decades however the scientist's protests have become even more urgent in the last five years. Despite this governments have failed to respond adequately. From this observation, I have extrapolated the idea that perhaps governments will also fail to forward plan and prepare for the predicted flows of climate migrants into western nations from poorer and more impacted nations such as African countries close to the equator for example.

My proposal is that given the partisan and beaurocratic nature of our political systems that tend to get bogged down in partisan ideology and debate could a computer model used to predict the flows of climate migrants across the globe work in tandem with an organizational ai algorithm to calculate the ideal way to humanely disperse and shelter mass arrivals of climate migrants? Indeed could the ai algorithm even oversee the ideal placement of individuals and family units to the point of ensuring adequate availability of resources such as financial benefits,  relocation issues, and housing advice, and even calculate the impact of local cultural attitudes towards migrants, etc.? 

Considering this is a science forum I suspect visitors and participants to this thread would be interested in the interface between predictive computer models and organizational ai algorithms, to that end I will have to spend some hours researching the subject and will reply later. :0)

Edited August 30, 2022 by chrisjones

[iNow]

10 hours ago, chrisjones said:

"and the people doing the planning often don’t care what the facts are."  What do you mean INOW?

I mean this is ultimately a political decision and the people making them very often do so without regard for facts. They prioritize politics, like appealing to the voters who don't want the "yucky brown people in their country stealing their jobs," for example. 

Even if your algorithm or calculation or AI or whatever magical technology you clearly don't understand very well... even if one of those gives the optimum distribution for people movement... the likelihood legislation and policy will execute on that proposal is slim to none. 

On another note, you're using the term "Artificial Intelligence" and AI as many peddlers or woo and nonsense use the term Quantum Mechanics and QM. Not much light btw your camp and theirs when comparing approaches.

[sethoflagos]

31 minutes ago, chrisjones said:

From this observation, I have extrapolated the idea that perhaps governments will also fail to forward plan and prepare for the predicted flows of climate migrants into western nations from poorer and more impacted nations such as African countries close to the equator for example.

As a resident of one of those 'African countries close to the equator' I've got to ask why you pick this example?

Do you see the equatorial belt as being more at threat due to climate change than Europe or the US? I was under the impression that the greatest impacts were likely to be felt in the higher latitudes.  

[Ghideon]

13 hours ago, chrisjones said:

Could ai be employed to track and predict the movements, numbers, points of the congregation during their migration, and the humane dispersal of climate refugees within western countries?

No. You have presented a scenario where “AI”* is not applicable.

*) currently available technologies & computer science, not something from science fiction

[swansont]

3 hours ago, chrisjones said:

My proposal is that given the partisan and beaurocratic nature of our political systems that tend to get bogged down in partisan ideology and debate could a computer model used to predict the flows of climate migrants across the globe work in tandem with an organizational ai algorithm to calculate the ideal way to humanely disperse and shelter mass arrivals of climate migrants? Indeed could the ai algorithm even oversee the ideal placement of individuals and family units to the point of ensuring adequate availability of resources such as financial benefits,  relocation issues, and housing advice, and even calculate the impact of local cultural attitudes towards migrants, etc.? 

You seem to be offering up ai as some sort of magical panacea, and, as Ghideon suggests, one that is part of science fiction rather than the real world. In our world, there are algorithms and spreadsheets and other computer-related tools, and these are already being used. 

Another disconnect is that somehow computer programming will not introduce or incorporate human bias, which it absolutely will, since humans are the ones doing the programming. Your "ideal way" depends on who is deciding on the ideal, which is very much a subjective criterion/criteria.

All in all, this is far too nebulous of a proposal IMO. It's not much more than "can we use computers to do...stuff" 

[chrisjones]

4 hours ago, swansont said:

You seem to be offering up ai as some sort of magical panacea, and, as Ghideon suggests, one that is part of science fiction rather than the real world. In our world, there are algorithms and spreadsheets and other computer-related tools, and these are already being used. 

Another disconnect is that somehow computer programming will not introduce or incorporate human bias, which it absolutely will, since humans are the ones doing the programming. Your "ideal way" depends on who is deciding on the ideal, which is very much a subjective criterion/criteria.

All in all, this is far too nebulous of a proposal IMO. It's not much more than "can we use computers to do...stuff" 

My neurons have just spontaneously calculated this point whilst making my wife a warm cup of tea and a biscuit. Actually, the calculations that are required are binary for the most part, both simple and complex simultaneously. Take this line from my post for example  Indeed could the ai algorithm even oversee the ideal placement of individuals and family units to the point of ensuring adequate availability of resources such as financial benefits,  relocation issues, housing advice, and even calculate the impact of local cultural attitudes towards migrants, etc.?

The system could consult the google search database and hunt for keywords to answer binary questions.

This could be expressed in binary zero or one, here are two examples.  Local benefits advisor available? Yes, 1 No 0, Land Sales for prefab housing? Yes, 1 No 0.

But how would the system calculate more complex questions from the google database? Such as the impact of how accepting local populations are of migrants.
It would search the google database for keywords pertaining to race hate crimes in a given local area and count the number of reports in any given area.

In reference to a previous post in this thread  I have done a casual search of predictive models but as yet not seen the synergistic addition of a binary organizational algorithm, however, will spend a bit more time on it tomorrow. :0)

[TheVat]

On 8/29/2022 at 6:53 PM, chrisjones said:

Could ai be employed to track and predict the movements, numbers, points of the congregation during their migration, and the humane dispersal of climate refugees within western countries?

How would an AI determine what is humane??  There is a reason we hand such questions (or try to) to ethicists, social workers, judges, psychologists, anthropologists....and not machines that have zero clue what it is to be a human uprooted by catastrophe.  

[chrisjones]

11 minutes ago, TheVat said:

How would an AI determine what is humane??  There is a reason we hand such questions (or try to) to ethicists, social workers, judges, psychologists, and anthropologists....and not machines that have zero clue what it is to be a human uprooted by catastrophe.  

Hi TheVat please read this line in the above post :0) But how would the system calculate more complex questions from the google database? Such as the impact of how accepting local populations are of migrants. It would search the google database for keywords about race hate crimes in a given local area and count the number of reports in any given area.

And this line The system could consult the google search database and hunt for keywords to answer binary questions.
This could be expressed in binary zero or one, here are two examples.  Local benefits advisor available? Yes, 1 No 0, Land Sales for prefab housing? Yes, 1 No 0.

I don't think machines are capable of empathy as yet in the context of this proposal and compared to human empathy, however, as you can see by these two examples, binary machines can calculate incidental empathy at least how we translate and perceive it. As you can see from the examples above the algorithm has calculated the availability of services for a given area and even calculated local attitudes to migrants in a given area. And the incidental consequences of these calculations are that living conditions and the quality of life of climate migrants would be acceptable and therefore as a consequence humane juxtaposed to conditions in the Calais camps for example.

[zapatos]

16 hours ago, chrisjones said:

Ok thanks for the heads up, I was hoping for someone with a higher IQ than myself who is more qualified to take the discussion forward, however, I will attempt to explain the concept in more detail.

I think you misuse "IQ" just like you misuse "AI".

AI is not the answer to every problem, and a person with a higher IQ is not automatically more qualified than a person with a lower IQ.

[Ghideon]

On 8/30/2022 at 2:53 AM, chrisjones said:

Could ai be employed to track and predict the movements, numbers, points of the congregation during their migration, and the humane dispersal of climate refugees within western countries?

There seems to be a fundamental logical flaw with the idea? If "AI"* could do what you seems to believe, then it would never be used to address the problems you describe. The "AI" would instead be used on root causes, to prevent the climate related problems you describe. 

 

*) I use "AI" instead of AI. OP seems to use the term for something else than Artificial Intelligence (AI) used in computer science. 

[chrisjones]

7 hours ago, TheVat said:

How would an AI determine what is humane??  There is a reason we hand such questions (or try to) to ethicists, social workers, judges, psychologists, and anthropologists....and not machines that have zero clue what it is to be a human uprooted by catastrophe.  

Further to my reply  TheVat, I think your question pertains to the humane dispersal of flows of migrants into western countries specifically. In this respect, I think it would require several algorithms synergistically cooperating to achieve a common goal. For instance, one algorithm to calculate the resettlement of climate migrants as outlined in a previous post but also a second algorithm assigned the task of ensuring adequate resources at points of the congregation and efficient logistics and transport for example.

But to take the concept further, we have all seen the haunting footage of how Jews were deliberately transported in harsh conditions and how families were seperated.
This system would ensure acceptable conditions during the dispersal of climate migrants and would absolutely not under any circumstances split up family units during dispersal and relocation.

Edited August 31, 2022 by chrisjones

[chrisjones]

7 hours ago, zapatos said:

I think you misuse "IQ" just like you misuse "AI".

AI is not the answer to every problem, and a person with a higher IQ is not automatically more qualified than a person with a lower IQ.

"AI is not the answer to every problem" But I think we can agree that catalysts can prove to be very useful?

21 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

As a resident of one of those 'African countries close to the equator, I've got to ask why you pick this example.

Do you see the equatorial belt as being more at threat due to climate change than Europe or the US? I was under the impression that the greatest impacts were likely to be felt in the higher latitudes.  

"As a resident of one of those 'African countries close to the equator I've got to ask why you pick this example. " I seem to recall that Lucy (Australopithecus) was also African as well?

Edited August 31, 2022 by chrisjones

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, chrisjones said:

"AI is not the answer to every problem" But I think we can agree that catalysts can prove to be very useful?

I wonder if the next dominant lifeform on Earth will evolve from plastic eating bacteria... 🤔 😉

The most enlightened mind would describe it thusly...

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by dimreepr

[sethoflagos]

7 hours ago, chrisjones said:

"As a resident of one of those 'African countries close to the equator I've got to ask why you pick this example. " I seem to recall that Lucy (Australopithecus) was also African as well?

Would you care to explain this response. I don't see the relevance.

[CharonY]

12 hours ago, chrisjones said:

But to take the concept further, we have all seen the haunting footage of how Jews were deliberately transported in harsh conditions and how families were seperated.

What? Are you referring to the holocaust? There, early computers were used to facilitate the genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Not sure why switching over to some nebulous AI would make things better. Policies and global strategies matter. Tools are subservient to those and can make things better or worse.

Also, I note that you keep using "AI" and "algorithm" similar to the term "magic wand". As in, it seems to magically solve the problem without exactly being clear how. And no, we just calculate something is not an explanation. It is just using different words to explain nothing. Can more data help? Sure, but it depends on exactly how we use it. But if we are not willing to either mitigate climate change or develop policies to address its impact or develop some sort of strategy to help each other, the AI might as well tell us to run in circles until we die, for all the good it will be doing.

[chrisjones]

On 8/31/2022 at 9:10 AM, Ghideon said:

There seems to be a fundamental logical flaw with the idea? If "AI"* could do what you seems to believe, then it would never be used to address the problems you describe. The "AI" would instead be used on root causes, to prevent the climate related problems you describe. 

 

*) I use "AI" instead of AI. OP seems to use the term for something else than Artificial Intelligence (AI) used in computer science. 

"The "AI" would instead be used on root causes, to prevent the climate related problems you describe. "


I currently have a doctor visiting my house and she thinks that this is a brilliant observation Ghideeon 👍

20 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Would you care to explain this response. I don't see the relevance.

Your Question "As a resident of one of those 'African countries close to the equator I've got to ask why you pick this example. "    My reply    I seem to recall that Lucy (Australopithecus) was also African as well?

Hi Seth I intended this response as my last reply on this forum never to be visited again, however, I will make one last attempt to explain my comments as I think you deserve an explanation. I tend to give people 60% of the information and then expect them to join the dots, in fact, this habit annoys my wife very much lol.

It was a reference to the genesis of humankind and that the majority of humanity still have fragments of early African DNA and that in fact, we are all from Africa ..............

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, chrisjones said:

It was a reference to the genesis of humankind and that the majority of humanity still have fragments of early African DNA and that in fact, we are all from Africa ..............

Uh, since we all came from Africa, how is it possible that we only have fragments of what you call African DNA? Do you think our DNA goes becomes something else once we move out of a region?

The way to think about it is pretty much all our DNA is shared with our African ancestors, but Eurasian populations have lost some of the diversity (bottleneck effect). While there are new alleles that are more prevalent or even exclusive to non-African populations, they are just relatively small bits of our shared genetic backbone.

2 hours ago, chrisjones said:

I tend to give people 60% of the information and then expect them to join the dots, in fact, this habit annoys my wife very much lol.

That is a bit problematic if the given information is not based on mainstream information and therefore makes it impossible for folks to join the dots in a correct way.