How Artificial Intelligence Can Fight Air Pollution In China 50
An anonymous reader writes: IBM is testing a new way to help fix Beijing's air pollution problem with artificial intelligence. Like many other cities across the country, the capital is surrounded by many coal burning factories. However, the air quality on a day-to-day basis can vary because of a number of reasons like industrial activity, traffic congestion, and the weather. IBM is testing a computer system capable of learning to predict the severity of air pollution several days in advance using large quantities of data from several different models. "We have built a prototype system which is able to generate high-resolution air quality forecasts, 72 hours ahead of time," says Xiaowei Shen, director of IBM Research China. "Our researchers are currently expanding the capability of the system to provide medium- and long-term (up to 10 days ahead) as well as pollutant source tracking, 'what-if' scenario analysis, and decision support on emission reduction actions."
regular old intelligence (Score:2)
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I'm still confused as to why they call it "artificial intelligence" instead of heuristics.
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It allowed IBM to add an extra 35% to the bill. Also, if you're a no nothing but what sounds better bureaucratic who are going to give a contract to Company A who says they solve your problem using heuristics or company B we will solve it using "artificial intelligence."
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I'm still confused as to why they call it "artificial intelligence" instead of heuristics.
Because it is not the same thing at all. Heuristics means following a set of known rules. With a neural net you can just feed it the raw data, and it will learn to find the patterns on its own. That is pretty much the opposite of heuristics.
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Except when they use neural networks they usually call it just that, whereas when they use heuristics they call it AI.
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There is a staggering number of network-type AI-like systems that are not neural networks. Consider genetic programming: a program is generated based on simple programming primitives like less_than(input, input), not(input), and(input, input) and it evolves itself, either through individual fitness feedback or by an evolutionary strategy.
So it's not correct to say that because it's not a neural network, it must be heuristic-based.
Re:regular old intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual solution is "stop spewing so much shit into the air", but that's hard to do and very expensive. Temporarily shutting down a smokestack here or there where the problem is worst isn't going to do anything substantial. This is about feel-good solutions, so the Chinese politicians can claim they're doing something, and IBM can get a contract.
I'm trying to figure out what good does it do someone to get a 72-hour forecast of how crappy the air will be? Can local residents stop breathing for a day or two until it clears up? Can they not go in to work and live in a filtered bubble at home? Uh... right. Instead, what will happen is the government will shut down nearby powerplants and limit gas-powered vehicle traffic, so those poor residents will have crappy air AND will be inconvenienced at the same time.
Color me skeptical. I wish them well in cleaning things up, but it's going to take more than a smart computer to make that happen.
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Some people in China wear masks. The educated ones wear N95 filters, the uneducated ones wear surgical masks. A forecast like this can help you plan how you're going to protect yourself. And you probably want to cancel that Saturday hike if the air is going to be hazardous.
How is this any different than a weather forecast?
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The alternative is more expensive - shutting down factories / telling people they can't drive to work. Not really a long term solution or any kind of decent solution. All it does is negate some of the worst pollution on the worst days, it doesn't address the problem that many Chinese cities have - a constant huge pollution problem.
Addressing the problem properly will create jobs and lower health costs.
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Perhaps human thought can be emulated (or replaced) the same way. We don't really know. There are many ways to skin the AI cat. And, we have Turing Equivalency.
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This isn't "intelligence" its a rules based "if" tree
No it isn't. It is based on data, not rules. There are no a priori "rules" and no "if tree".
The answer is Skynet (Score:1)
I can see it already (Score:1)
Dave: "HAL, open the pod bay door."
HAL: "Sorry, Dave, I cannot do that."
Dave: "Why not, HAL?"
HAL: "You stink, Dave."
Dave: "HAL, please clarify."
HAL: "You didn't take a bath, Dave. You will pollute the ship."
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I've read about them. Does that count?
Less AI and more air filters (Score:1)
Seems to me that this is more about going around the problem than addressing it. Force factories to implement better pollution control mechanisms, increase the cost of goods a % and take care of the problem....
Or you could put some filters on your stacks (Score:3)
... seriously... use coal if you want but for the love of god put some filters on those things.
"because of a number of reasons"?? (Score:2)
I know grammar is a foreign concept here, but couldn't the editors try to do a little of it now and then?
I mean, the editors actually doing their job once a day probably wouldn't hurt...much.
Making the World a Better Place (Score:1)
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So, prediction fixes air pollution how exactly? it's not like factories are going to shut down for any reason.
not fix, fight. i guess the strategy is to sell useless expensive data analysis to china until they are broke and have to shut down the factories. voilà.
I don't see how this helps (Score:2)
I don't get how this helps.
They are saying they might be able to predict air pollution. That is very different from doing anything to fight against air pollution. I guess you need to understand it first before you can do anything about it.
But I don't think the model will significantly help our understanding of air pollution to fix it. We know where the pollution comes from. we just need to cut the source.
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Computer do not breathe (Score:2)
Or ... (Score:5, Insightful)
they could just give their environmental regulators the authority to enforce their existing environmental laws.
In the film Under the Dome [wikipedia.org], Chinese journalist Chai Jing astonishes a Chinese audience with a film clip from California where Cal DoT stops a truck and actually checks that it has all the mandatory safety and emissions equipment. That never happens in China. China has tough emissions standards on paper, but the law is written so that the regulators don't have any enforcement powers. So Chinese manufacturers simply slap stickers on vehicles claiming they have all the mandatory emissions equipment without installing any of it. Technically this is a crime, but the law's written so there's literally nothing anyone can do about it.
And if you don't think environmental regulations make a difference, this [wikimedia.org] is what New York looked like in 1970. Note that that isn't a sepia tinted black and white photo, it's true color. Granted it shows an exceptionally bad day, but before the Clean Air Act got strengthened in the mid 70s bad smog was pretty common. If you look at pictures of American cities from the 70s you'd think that photo technology of the day put a blue or yellow haze on stuff in the distance (like this [google.com]). It wasn't the film, cities actually looked that way a lot of the time.
Predicting bad pollution days isn't "fighting" pollution, it's living with it. If you want to fight pollution you've got to stop people from polluting. You've got to catch them at it, fine them, and in some cases throw them in jail. Pollution like they have in China is nothing short of manslaughter on a national scale. 1.6 million people die every year from it.
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Predicting bad pollution days isn't "fighting" pollution, it's living with it. If you want to fight pollution you've got to stop people from polluting. You've got to catch them at it, fine them, and in some cases throw them in jail. Pollution like they have in China is nothing short of manslaughter on a national scale. 1.6 million people die every year from it.
Excellent background, very well spoken.
Here is the full length documentary, Chai Jing's review: Under the Dome --- Investigating China's Smog [youtube.com] with English subtitles. To those who haven't DO carve out an hour and forty minutes to see it. An impeccably researched, awe-inspiring piece of journalism.
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It was never unprofitable to manufacture in the US. It was marginally more profitable to manufacture in China, because they have priced their air, water, soil indeed bodies at 0.
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I'm not disputing that China has undercut us, but I'm saying that's in part because they're not a democracy and they don't care what their citizens think as long as they don't express those feelings or act upon them.
And yet every prediction comes out the same: (Score:2)
GIGA Buck non solutions. (Score:2)
What about actual intelligence? (Score:2)
Too bad it takes artificial intelligence to do something actual intelligence could fix.