Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1520224
MATTHEW VELLA mvella@mediatoday.com.mt 8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 MAY 2024 NEWS EXPRESSION OF INTEREST Submit your application MEDIATORS Aġenzija għas-Servizzi tal-Qrati The Court Services Agency on behalf of the Ministry for Justice and Reform of the Construction Sector is seeking to set up a panel of Mediators, in terms of Regulation 3(1)(a) of the Civil Court (Family Section), The First Hall of the Civil Court and The Court of Magistrates (Gozo) (Superior Jurisdiction) (Family Section) Regulations (S.L. 12.20). Persons with the necessary qualities to undertake the functions of mediators, who wish to be considered to form part of this pool are invited to submit an Expression of Interest together with their Curriculum Vitae addressed to the Chief Executive Officer, Court Services Agency, Courts of Justice, Republic Street, Valletta VLT 1112. Applicants will be required to sit for an interview and selected applicants shall be required to undergo specialised training inherent to this role. Further information and a comprehensive description of duties can be obtained by contacting the Court Services Agency on recruitment.courts@courtservices.mt. Applications will be received by e-mail on recruitment.courts@courtservices.mt till Friday 17th May 2024 at 12:00 hrs (noon). It's cars, stupid: why AI could worsen WHISPER it softly, but not everyone buys into the great white hope that AI might solve Malta's impossible traffic vol- umes by making it easier to drive around. The tech entrepreneur Prof. Alexiei Dingli successfully pitched for a €1.3 million deal on Shark Tank to use AI to optimise Malta's worsening traffic flows, in a bid to adjust traffic lights by analysing the island's traffic cams. The key is in the robots of course: make them do what hu- mans do today, faster and more efficiently. But one Maltese veteran of tech marketing is wary of the solution: making traffic in Malta more efficient will only increase its use – ergo, more traffic. Richard Muscat lives with his family in Austria and has worked with dozens of world-class or- ganisations like Automattic and Redgate, building and managing high-performing products and teams. Since 2019 he has focused on in-depth climate solutions. But as he sees Malta's unfolding traffic problems, he prescribes perhaps the simplest of solutions – less cars. "In Malta, there is already re- al-life and tangible experience of how this has panned out with re- spect to traffic. Over the dec- ades, successive governments have attempted to 'tackle' the traffic problems with tactics like widening roads, bypasses, flyo- vers, tunnels, and better paving. Not once has this resulted in a decrease in traffic and conges- tion. This is because when you 'add a lane' to a road to decrease congestion, it incentivises more care use not less. More car sales not less. And less use of pub- lic transport or car-sharing not more." It's called the 'rebound para- dox', Muscat says: as techno- logical progress increases the efficiency of, in this case private transportation, it just encour- ages greater demand for that resource. "Say you buy a block of 500g of cheese, and it will be cheaper on the whole than the smaller 200g block. But we know through experience that you will eat the larger block in a shorter period of time: because when it feels there's a surplus, we're more likely to take more." And that's why Muscat thinks neither Dingli nor successive ad- ministrations are rising to meet the problem of Malta's traffic woes, or rather one of its symp- toms. Malta is already turning to Artificial Intelligence to re- duce traffic congestion, with the government spending €2 million to incorporate existing traffic lights, CCTV and display pan- els systems into one system and analyse congestion, to distribute Less cars, not easier driving says climate tech expert who promotes 'degrowth' as a simple philosophy with far-reaching possibilities for Malta Tech entrepreneur Prof. Alexiei Dingli (right) successfully pitched for a €1.3 million deal on Shark Tank to use AI to optimise Malta's worsening traffic flows, but tech marketing veteran Richard Muscat (inset) believes that making traffic in Malta more efficient will only increase its use