Algorithms might be designed, for example, to infer how many times per day a refrigerator door was opened (relevant to dietary and obesity studies), the times of day a residence was occupied (relevant to air pollution health studies), and even the pattern of sleep (relevant to a variety of health studies).

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The right response to that, though, would be to curb pollution and try to alter the pattern of growth to make it less resource-intensive, rather than to control population directly.

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