Article by Steve Lohr: “John Giorgi uses artificial intelligence to make artificial intelligence. The 29-year-old computer scientist creates software for a health care start-up that records and summarizes patient visits for doctors, freeing them from hours spent typing up clinical notes. To do so, Mr. Giorgi has his own timesaving helper: an A.I. coding assistant. He taps a few keys and the software tool suggests the rest of the line of code. It can also recommend changes, fetch data, identify bugs and run basic tests. Even though the A.I. makes some mistakes, it saves him up to an hour... (More >)
Nonprofits, Stop Doing Needs Assessments.
Design for Social Impact: “Too many non-profits and funders still roll into communities with a clipboard and a mission to document everything “missing.” Needs assessments have become a default tool for diagnosing deficits, reinforcing a saviour mentality where outsiders decide what’s broken and needs fixing. I’ve sat in meetings where non-profits present lists of what communities lack: “Youth don’t have leadership skills” “Parents don’t value education” “Grassroots organisations don’t have capacity” The subtext? “They need us.” And because funding is tied to these narratives of scarcity, organisations learn to describe themselves in the language of need rather than strength—because... (More >)
The New Control Society
Essay by Jon Askonas: “Let me tell you two stories about the Internet. The first story is so familiar it hardly warrants retelling. It goes like this. The Internet is breaking the old powers of the state, the media, the church, and every other institution. It is even breaking society itself. By subjecting their helpless users to ever more potent algorithms to boost engagement, powerful platforms distort reality and disrupt our politics. YouTube radicalizes young men into misogynists. TikTok turns moderate progressives into Hamas supporters. Facebook boosts election denialism; or it censors stories doubting the safety of mRNA vaccines.... (More >)
Generative AI for data stewards: enhancing accuracy and efficiency in data governance
Paper by Ankush Reddy Sugureddy: “The quality of data becomes an essential component for the success of an organisation in a world that is largely influenced by data, where data analytics is becoming increasingly popular in the process of informing strategic decisions. The failure to improve the quality of the data can lead to undesirable outcomes such as poor decisions, ineffective strategies, dysfunctional operations, lost commercial prospects, and abrasion of the consumer. In the process of organisations shifting their focus towards transformative methods such as generative artificial intelligence, several use cases may emerge that have the potential to aid... (More >)
In Online Democracy, Fun Is Imperative
Essay by Joe Mathews: “Governments around the world, especially those at the subnational and local levels, find themselves stuck in a vise. Planetary problems like climate change, disease, and technological disruption are not being addressed adequately by national governments. Everyday people, whose lives have been disrupted by those planetary problems, press the governments closer to them to step up and protect them. But those governments lack the technical capacity and popular trust to act effectively against bigger problems. To build trust and capacity, many governments are moving governance into the digital world and asking their residents to do more... (More >)
California Governor Launches New Digital Democracy Tool
Article by Phil Willon: “California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday announced a new digital democracy initiative that will attempt to connect residents directly with government officials in times of disaster and allow them to express their concerns about matters affecting their day-to-day lives. The web-based initiative, called Engaged California, will go live with a focus on aiding victims of the deadly wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena who are struggling to recover. For example, comments shared via the online forum could potentially prompt government action regarding insurance coverage, building standards or efforts to require utilities to bury power lines... (More >)
The Missing Pieces in India’s AI Puzzle: Talent, Data, and R&D
Article by Anirudh Suri: “This paper explores the question of whether India specifically will be able to compete and lead in AI or whether it will remain relegated to a minor role in this global competition. The paper argues that if India is to meet its larger stated ambition of becoming a global leader in AI, it will need to fill significant gaps in at least three areas urgently: talent, data, and research. Putting these three missing pieces in place can help position India extremely well to compete in the global AI race. India’s national AI mission (NAIM), also... (More >)
How Innovation Ecosystems Foster Citizen Participation Using Emerging Technologies in Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands
OECD Report: “This report examines how actors in Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands interact and work together to contribute to the development of emerging technologies for citizen participation. Through in-depth research and analysis of actors’ motivations, experiences, challenges, and enablers in this nascent but promising field, this paper presents a unique cross-national perspective on innovation ecosystems for citizen participation using emerging technology. It includes lessons and concrete proposals for policymakers, innovators, and researchers seeking to develop technology-based citizen participation initiatives... (More >)
Data Sovereignty and Open Sharing: Reconceiving Benefit-Sharing and Governance of Digital Sequence Information
Paper by Masanori Arita: “There are ethical, legal, and governance challenges surrounding data, particularly in the context of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources. I focus on the shift in the international framework, as exemplified by the CBD-COP15 decision on benefit-sharing from DSI and discuss the growing significance of data sovereignty in the age of AI and synthetic biology. Using the example of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tension between open science principles and data control rights is explained. This opinion also highlights the importance of inclusive and equitable data sharing frameworks that respect both privacy and sovereign data... (More >)
Organisations in the Age of Algorithms
Article by Phanish Puranam: “When Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai recently revealed that 25 percent of the company’s software is now machine-generated, it underscored how quickly artificial intelligence is reshaping the workplace. What does this mean for how we organise and manage? Will there still be room for humans in tomorrow’s organisations? And what might their work conditions look like? I tackle these questions in my new book “Re-Humanize: How to Build Human-Centric Organizations in the Age of Algorithms”. The answers are not a given. They will depend on what we choose to do – what kinds of organisations we... (More >)
