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The AI revolution is overlooking remote communities, but researchers can change this, says a behavioural data scientist.
The study of artificial intelligence (AI) is a relatively new field but one that is rapidly expanding. In 2015, researchers in the United States published 850 articles on artificial intelligence and robotics in journals tracked by the Nature Index; that figure had risen to 3,651 by 2021. Such rapid growth has been mirrored elsewhere, and although it might be cause for excitement, it is also good reason to be wary of biases and inconsistencies in how this research is conducted and applied.
One of these potential discrepancies is the way in which AI relates to urban and rural communities. According to Ganna Pogrebna, executive director of the Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Futures Institute at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, New South Wales, those living in remote areas are potentially more exposed to the technology's dangers than their urban counterparts, but are being neglected by research.
How are rural communities treated differently by AI?
It starts with data collection, which is often harvested from our smart phones. Urban populations are more likely to use iPhones whereas rural populations lean towards Android. A 2021 study (D. J. Leith In Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (ed. J. Garcia-Alfaro et al.) 231-251; Springer, 2021) found that Android phones give Google 20 times more data than iPhones send to Apple. Android phones dominate...