The Flint water crisis has resulted in all-time high numbers of children with special needs and poor performance in school. More than 12,000 children to were exposed to toxic levels of lead in 2014 when the city switched it's public water source to the Flint River, where the water is considerably more acidic. This led to corrosion in lead pipes, which imbued the city's tap water with lead, and then introduced it into the drinking supply. Lead exposure has been linked to behavioral and cognitive problems, mental illness, and an underdeveloped brain. Now, researchers from Michigan and New Jersey experts have reported the rate of young children diagnosed with special needs increased by eight percent after 2014 while performance in math class dropped.

EFFORTS are under way to replace the lead pipes that have been contaminating the water supply in the city of Flint, Michigan. Nobody knows which of the 55,000 properties are directly affected, but an artificially intelligent algorithm can make accurate guesses. The Flint water crisis began in 2014 when city officials began sourcing water from the local river instead of the Detroit water system. The water wasn't treated properly and corroded lead pipes, causing the heavy metal to leach into drinking water.

In episode fourteen of season two, we talk about Perturb-and-MAP, we take a listener question about classic artificial intelligence ideas being used in modern machine learning, plus we talk with Jake Abernethy of the University of Michigan about municipal data and his work on the Flint water crisis.