Death row is the end of the line for most people, but some are lucky enough to appeal and get off the sentence. But could there be a computer to predict who lives and who ‘dies’? The US might just have something like that. ANN, artificial neural network, which is a computer system that is modeled after the human brain, is able to deduce how various factors within a jumble of data correspond to each other. ANN can then use that data and use it to make ‘predictions’ about another fresh set of data. They are now using this computer to try and predict what inmates from death row may live and who may die.
They entered data from inmates from various years with 18 factors including sex, age, race, marital status, educational level, and information on their capital offenses. They then fed it with inmates, same profiles, from the same time and asked ANN to predict what would happen to them. Amazingly, it had just predicted the fates of more than 90% of the inmates.
To find out what the main factor causing ANN to make the decisions it made, they recreated ANN leaving a factor out each time. What they found was both surprising and obvious. Women were almost never executed so it took that data and found it wasn’t an important factor when it came to execution. But one of the big surprising factor was the educational level, the number of years spent in high school. This is essential because it tells how well an inmate can manage the appeal process. Simon Shepherd of Death Watch International, a group that campaigns against the death penalty worldwide, states,
This finding confirms that being executed is not about what you’ve done, but more about your ability to defend yourself.
Although this is a major breakthrough for scientists and the computer industry, they expect little change on the rules of the death penalty. This might, in the future, be something that could help a lot of people out in finding the displacement of the persons mind. Whether or not they would be able to use this in court would be a different story. But we have a long way to go before it is perfected.
Via: eurekalert
Comments
And how much of adernalin should it secrete the computer should be able to monotor and predict...can be possible! If not the row should be rued Taylor.Nice one
Hmm I don’t think computers should ever make life decisions, or any major decisions as a matter of fact for the moment. Maybe 200 years from now when PCs have their own Human like life forms, but now I think it would always be unfair, since the human programmers still do not even understand the full extent of their own mind to even understand how to program it properly.
But how can you say that and then say in 200 years they will have their own? They have to undergo these sort of steps to even get to that point, if possible. I don’t believe that computers should say death or life or anyone say death or life, but I do believe in technological advance in the good heart of life. And I believe this is what that is.