Stefaan Verhulst
Article by Colin Lecher: “The Arkansas-based data broker Acxiom claims it has data on billions of people around the world, including where they live and how they might spend their money. It says it can even deduce their political leanings, weight, and interest in medical procedures.
But what exactly does the company know?
For Tracey Reed, a nonprofit worker in Oregon, it knew enough to compile a 58-page dossier charting the purported history of her income, employment, and education, not to mention her spending, including everything from her online shopping to charitable giving. Although much of the information was incorrect, she said, the company attempted to log where she lived, complete with latitude and longitude coordinates. And it listed dozens of companies to which it had sold data or inferences about her.
“I think it’s pretty gross that people are treated like sources of wealth to be mined,” she said. “And that’s what these data profiles are, like, ‘Here’s a guide for how to squeeze this person and get money out of them.’”…(More)”.
Book by Paul Verhagen: “…Liberal democracies have treated political development as a finished project. Markets would spread freedom, technology would spread markets, and government would become increasingly administrative. That consensus left democratic institutions unprepared for companies that control public infrastructure, information, and increasingly the terms of political decision-making.
This book is an audit of that failure: what was surrendered, who now holds power, and why the political language we inherited can no longer describe the world we live in…(More)”.
The Economist: “…Read the headlines in Western media and it may seem as though a backlash to AI is spreading fast everywhere. But so far, it is not. Mr Bae’s sunny disposition about AI is shared by almost two-thirds of South Koreans, according to a survey that GlobeScan, a polling firm, conducted for The Economist. Outside rich countries this good feeling is even more strongly shared: nearly nine in ten people in Nigeria and Vietnam, for example, said that AI will improve not only their own lives, but the lot of humanity (see chart 1).
The polling across 34 countries was carried out online, which could tilt attitudes in favour of AI. Yet in the same survey sentiment in rich Western countries was much gloomier. In America, Canada and France more people felt negatively than positively about AI’s future impact on humanity. In other Western countries sentiment was net-positive, but far less so than in the poor world. Another recent survey of 37 countries, carried out by Gallup with Microsoft, returned similar results: AI is broadly popular, but less so in rich Western countries.
Why the gap between the West and the rest? Some of the optimism may cool as more people in poor countries come into direct contact with AI or data centres, and see the technology helping or hurting some more than others. Around 9% of working-age Kenyans used AI in the second quarter of 2026, according to a study by Microsoft. Yet 85% told GlobeScan that it would change their lives for the better…(More)”.
Paper by Jess Reia, Jonathan van Geuns and Nicole Bassoff: “AI is becoming pervasive in everyday life, appearing as a visible and constant presence in many aspects of work, education, and personal relationships. It restructures job markets, creates new slop aesthetics, and is forcibly incorporated into almost all digital services with promises of economic growth and efficiency, without any serious reflection on the social and political consequences. But we believe that the situation is not hopeless or settled, no matter how powerful the corporations or systems profiting from AI may appear. The trick is to recognize that democratic levers for change are not given in advance, but must be actively and creatively reimagined. This collection of essays is a survey of where such handles are hiding in the digital age, in places considerably less obvious than a county hearing. In procurement, in a watershed boundary, in a tax treaty almost nobody knows exists, in a benchmark written by users rather than engineers, or in a legal assumption about how technology “works” that is ripe for challenging. None of these were designed as democratic instruments, which is precisely the point. Democracy is presented not as a form of government but a way of living, and as a skill that can be practiced. The authors reflect on an emergent, collective argument about the different meanings and possibilities of “digital democracy from below.” They go beyond the U.S. context to explore distinct but interdependent dynamics of technological politics in places around the world. The collection has five sections: (1) Seeing through the fog; (2) Recognizing the limits of infrastructure; (3) Fighting erasure; (4) Practicing everyday democracy; and (5) Resisting, organizing and re-building. It also offers a roadmap for organizing participatory workshops that can adapted and reused…(More)”.
Paper by Manotar Tampubolon: “The blend of artificial intelligence (AI) and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) creates a fresh approach to developing technology that is both ethical and inclusive. This research dives into how AI, when paired with Indigenous perspectives, can lead to more comprehensive and culturally aware solutions in tech. Traditional Indigenous knowledge, grounded in strong ethical values and a deep understanding of context, provides insights that are often missed in the AI landscape. However, the commercialization and misuse of Indigenous knowledge through AI raise serious issues, such as the risk of losing cultural heritage, ownership rights, and the reinforcement of harmful stereotypes. This study aims to explore how AI and Indigenous knowledge can come together to foster fair and ethical innovations, tackling the gaps and challenges in today’s tech practices. By utilizing secondary data sources like case studies and theoretical frameworks, the research employs a virtue ethics lens to examine the ethical aspects of this intersection. It emphasizes the necessity for AI systems that are culturally sensitive and that honor Indigenous ways of knowing, ensuring technology benefits a variety of communities. The findings indicate that when AI is developed with Indigenous insights, it can greatly improve ethical decision-making, boost inclusivity, and help eliminate harmful biases found in mainstream AI. Nonetheless, challenges remain, such as securing proper consent, preventing cultural appropriation, and avoiding exploitation. This research highlights the critical need for collaboration between Indigenous communities and AI developers, providing suggestions for building inclusive, equitable, and sustainable tech frameworks…(More)”.
Article by Eric Boodman: “The bug looked like a new species. It had the classic mark of the dead-leaf mantises — a flattened shield, brown and crinkled to mimic forest-floor detritus — but the camouflage was almost too good, as if it were wearing an actual leaf. It was unlike any specimen Kris Anderson had ever seen.
Mr. Anderson has seen plenty of specimens. He has thousands pinned in drawers in his Las Vegas home, legs out, wings spread to reveal a stained-glass geometry of veins.
Every evening after his workday as a director of a counseling center, he spends two and a half hours poring over the 500 or 600 mantis pictures that enthusiasts have uploaded to the citizen science website iNaturalist, where anyone can submit photos of wildlife to help map biodiversity. To Mr. Anderson, most are junk — blurry shots of common species. But every so often there is something worth writing up: a mantis never before documented on Aruba, or a rare behavior, like three females seemingly eating each other.
For a few seconds, the mantis he saw on June 17 seemed like a taxonomic jackpot. Then he realized he’d been duped. This mantis was fake, a product of artificial intelligence…(More)”.
OECD Report: “Sharing data across organisations and jurisdictions generates economic and social value, increasingly so as progress in artificial intelligence depends on access to high-quality, domain-specific data. Data spaces promise trusted multi-party data sharing under federated governance, yet, despite significant public investment, few have reached operational and financial viability. Drawing on the analysis of more than 200 initiatives, including case studies of successes and failures, and an OECD Expert Workshop, this report examines where data spaces provide value that alternative data-sharing mechanisms cannot. In so doing, it illustrates how data spaces best suit settings with three or more parties, limited trust in any single intermediary, collective value creation and ongoing governance needs. Governance design, interoperability and trust-enhancing mechanisms underpin this value, but many face a bootstrapping problem, which eight policy considerations help address. The report supports OECD work on data free flow with trust (DFFT) and the OECD Recommendation on Enhancing Access to and Sharing of Data…(More)”.
Paper by Anil Arora: “National Statistical Offices (NSOs) were established to serve essential state functions—taxation, mobilization, and administrative governance—but evolved into professional institutions that safeguard the public interest through impartial statistics. Today, despite sustained modernization, many NSOs face declining survey participation, fiscal pressure, political encroachment, and mounting competition from private-sector and AI-mediated data actors. This paper is intended to stimulate discussion within the international statistical community and those dependent on high quality data, information and insights to make decisions. It does not seek to exhaustively catalogue the many national statistical organizations, national statistical institutes (NSIs), and professional associations engaged in innovation and reform to increase trust, relevance and impact. Rather, it highlights illustrative examples of innovation, leadership, and risk to underscore a central proposition: modernization of methods and technologies is necessary but not sufficient. Sustained trust requires visible independence, ethical leadership, proactive engagement, and institutional courage. Drawing on international initiatives led by the United Nations Statistics Division, OECD, Eurostat, the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS), the International Statistical Institute (ISI), and the American Statistical Association (ASA), among others, as well as modernization leadership within several advanced statistical systems, the paper proposes a comprehensive reform agenda for democratic resilience, notably in an emerging AI-mediated information ecosystem…(More)”.
Essay by Preston Lee: “My generation has never experienced politics untouched by algorithms. Every election I have been old enough to follow has unfolded, at least in part, on social media. From Obama’s historic victory in 2008 to Trump’s unconventional win for a second term in 2024, these campaigns showed how political campaigns compete not only for votes but also for attention, likes, and shares.
Very few people today question whether artificial intelligence will affect elections. The debate has shifted from “if” to “how.” The more urgent question is how artificial intelligence will shape voters’ political habits, particularly through the spread of disingenuous disinformation and the rise of political apathy. If AI erodes public trust in the democratic system and convinces citizens that their participation no longer matters, it threatens election outcomes and the legitimacy of our democracy as a whole.
The root of a healthy democracy is shared ideals that allow disagreement to occur without undermining the system itself. Melissa De Witte, Deputy Director of Social Science Communications at Stanford, gathers perspectives from experts and conveys in her article how healthy democracies need discourse and disagreement. She speaks with Debra Satz, Dean of the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and Paul Brest, Director of the Law & Policy Lab at Stanford Law School. Satz shares, “Disagreement can be a space that allows sharply different voices to be heard, but only when there are established processes and procedures in place to handle conflict when it arises and norms of openness, humility, and mutual respect.” Mutual trust bridges access and participation, and it is fundamental to democracy because, as defined by the Youth Democracy Cohort, our “democracy depends on participation,” and if trust deteriorates, cynicism increases while promoting political apathy. When people no longer trust or support these systems, where do they turn?
The most dangerous consequence of the rise of AI is that it may convince people that there is no point in making their own decisions in the first place. Artificial intelligence has created a world where information can be broadly distributed, but it can also be manipulated for political persuasion. Now, speeches can be written in seconds, and political conversations can be generated to mimic the voices of political figures, without direct human participation. Its rapid advancements have created an environment in which citizens question the authenticity of information, leading to disengagement across the nation. Yet, when 81% of Americans feel that crucial election content will be rife with misinformation because of artificial intelligence, it becomes increasingly hard to trust the integrity of democracy…(More)”.
Article by Paula Oliver Llorente: “Since the appointment of the European Commission’s first Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy on 1 December 2024, technological sovereignty has become a fashionable term in the corridors of Brussels, Berlin, Paris and every other European capital, including Madrid. Yet this has happened without a clear definition of the concept.
Despite this shortcoming, the European Commission has sought to give the concept substance and meaning through accomplished facts. Just a few weeks before the summer, it unveiled its long-awaited technological sovereignty package, which, in simplified terms, understands technological sovereignty as possessing the digital capabilities needed for our society to function while minimising strategic dependencies and the risks of external interference. The package was necessary and includes highly relevant measures for the Union’s technological sovereignty, but it also clearly reflects many of the EU’s unresolved dilemmas. However, if one critical flaw had to be singled out, it would be that it neither rests on nor addresses one of the essential elements of technological sovereignty: agency, that is, the capacity to decide what the digital future into which technology will be integrated should look like…(More)”.