The poverty It is one of the oldest problems in the history of mankind. In recent decades its reduction has slowed down, while the Discrimination towards the poorest populationa phenomenon called aporophobia, has been increasing.
The relationship between Aporophobia and poverty It has been theorized since the field of sociology on numerous occasions, but without empirical evidence that endorses it. In this context, a group of Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), in collaboration with the University of Notre-DAME (United States), has made the First numerical simulation (that is, through computing algorithms and programs) to support the correlation between aporophobic policies and increased poverty and economic inequality in the population of Barcelona.
This type of model could represent a new way of doing politics, since it allows governments to verify the effect of potential laws before putting them into practice.
How Barcelona Society Model
The project, called AABM (APORENT-BASED MODEL APOOPHOBO), built a model of the Barcelona Society formed by 100 agents with different profiles (age, sex, level of wealth, etc.). These profiles were created according to the demographic data of Four neighborhoods of the city: Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, Gràcia, Les Corts and Eixample.
In the simulation, these agents had to meet their needs by performing the actions that best suited them at all times.
Let’s give the example of an agent with a wealth of € 1,500 whose most pressing need at that time is to “eat.” That leads him to perform the action “go to the supermarket”, which updates his situation, lowering the urgency of the need to “eat” and decreasing its wealth to € 1,450 (assuming that in the supermarket it was spent € 50). Then the model reassess the situation to decide which is the following action that the agent should take. The probability of going to the supermarket again is very low, since the need to eat has already been satisfied. Instead now I will buy clothes or spend time with your family, depending on the agent’s profile and its other current needs.
But, How can the behavior of a community be modeled, your choice of actionsusing computer language? The relationships that occur within a group, however small, are extremely complex, since they depend on an infinity of interrelated variables. A numerical simulation aims to rebel this intricate framework by detecting those most influential variables and, with them, build a simplification of reality.
In the case of AABM, the profile is a key piece. All agents have needs (eating, having clothes, spending time with the family …). However, “the profile determines the urgency of satisfying every need, the satisfaction expected when doing it and its importance (Based on the Maslow pyramid). That action that maximizes the so -called deliberation function, which depends on these three characteristics, will be chosen, ”explains Alba Aguilera, a researcher at IIIA.
The effect of social norms
The simulation evolved under several possible scenarios, each characterized by a set of laws that were imposed on the model. The goal was Observe how the distribution of wealth varied of society in each case.
For this first evidence, only six laws belonging to the Official State Gazette were included, three of them considered non-perophabic and three others considered apoplobic (summarized in the table). These laws only apply to the citizen if their profile brings together the necessary conditions and, if so, have an effect on it.
In this way, in each scenario, the actions of an entire society were modeled, whose individual needs were evolving over time. At the end of the experiment, the population’s wealth distributions were compared according to which laws were applied.
A new way of doing politics
After carrying out the simulation for all combinations of the six laws, conclusive results were extracted: Applying only the non-arofobic norms obtained the distribution of more egalitarian wealth, while applying only the aporophobic. In addition, norm 1 could be identified (see the table) as the one that contributed more significantly to the reduction of extreme poverty.
This indicates that there could be a correlation between legal discrimination towards poverty and its increase. But the most innovative is that The study was conducted in a non -invasive mannerthat is, without affecting the real population.
The researchers themselves point out that, although there is still a lot of improvement margin, their model could already be applied to other cities in the world using the corresponding demographic data and expand by adding more laws, two lines of work than the IIIA-CSIC plans to study soon.
At the moment, the conclusions of this preliminary study are already very promising, with a clear application in municipal policies. In fact, the refinement of this type of model would allow the executive bodies to make decisions with a computational basis, without having to use the population as a guinea pig of their new policies and providing them with a powerful tool to efficiently reduce problems such as problems such as poverty.
Laia Serradesanferm He is a journalist and Alba Aguilera She is a researcher in the artificial intelligence (IIIA) investigation of the CSIC.
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