Can an algorithm tell when kids are in danger?

Child protective agencies are haunted when they fail to save children. Officials in the US believe

The call to Pittsburgh’s hotline for child abuse and neglect came in at 3.50pm on the Wednesday just before Christmas.

Sitting in one of 12 cubicles, in a former factory now occupied by the Allegheny County Police Department and the back offices of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, the call screener, Timothy Byrne, listened as a preschool teacher described what a three-year-old child had told him.