In AI We Trust: Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Helga Nowotny: “One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us.

At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. This happens when we forget that that we humans have created the digital technologies to which we attribute agency. These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care.

As we try to adjust to a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to understand better the limitations of AI and how their predictions affect our agency, while at the same time having the courage to embrace the uncertainty of the future….(More)”.

Towards intellectual freedom in an AI Ethics Global Community

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christoph Ebell et al: “The recent incidents involving Dr. Timnit Gebru, Dr. Margaret Mitchell, and Google have triggered an important discussion emblematic of issues arising from the practice of AI Ethics research. We offer this paper and its bibliography as a resource to the global community of AI Ethics Researchers who argue for the protection and freedom of this research community. Corporate, as well as academic research settings, involve responsibility, duties, dissent, and conflicts of interest. This article is meant to provide a reference point at the beginning of this decade regarding matters of consensus and disagreement on how to enact AI Ethics for the good of our institutions, society, and individuals. We have herein identified issues that arise at the intersection of information technology, socially encoded behaviors, and biases, and individual researchers’ work and responsibilities. We revisit some of the most pressing problems with AI decision-making and examine the difficult relationships between corporate interests and the early years of AI Ethics research. We propose several possible actions we can take collectively to support researchers throughout the field of AI Ethics, especially those from marginalized groups who may experience even more barriers in speaking out and having their research amplified. We promote the global community of AI Ethics researchers and the evolution of standards accepted in our profession guiding a technological future that makes life better for all….(More)”.

Leave No Migrant Behind: The 2030 Agenda and Data Disaggregation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Guide by the International Organization for Migration (IOM): “To date, disaggregation of global development data by migratory status remains low. Migrants are largely invisible in official SDG data. As the global community approaches 2030, very little is known about the impact of the 2030 Agenda on migrants. Despite a growing focus worldwide on data disaggregation, namely the breaking down of data into smaller sub-categories, there is a lack of practical guidance on the topic that can be tailored to address individual needs and capacities of countries.

Developed by IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), the guide titled ‘Leave No Migrant Behind: The 2030 Agenda and Data Disaggregation‘ centres on nine SDGs focusing on hunger, education, and gender equality among others. The document is the first of its kind, in that it seeks to address a range of different categorization interests and needs related to international migrants and suggests practical steps that practitioners can tailor to best fit their context…The guide also highlights the key role disaggregation plays in understanding the many positive links between migration and the SDGs, highlighting migrants’ contributions to the 2030 Agenda.

The guide outlines key steps for actors to plan and implement initiatives by looking at sex, gender, age and disability, in addition to migratory status. These steps include undertaking awareness raising, identifying priority indicators, conducting data mapping, and more….Read more about the importance of data disaggregation for SDG indicators here….(More)”

Governing Privacy in Knowledge Commons

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Access Book edited by Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo et al: “…explores how privacy impacts knowledge production, community formation, and collaborative governance in diverse contexts, ranging from academia and IoT, to social media and mental health. Using nine new case studies and a meta-analysis of previous knowledge commons literature, the book integrates the Governing Knowledge Commons framework with Helen Nissenbaum’s Contextual Integrity framework. The multidisciplinary case studies show that personal information is often a key component of the resources created by knowledge commons. Moreover, even when it is not the focus of the commons, personal information governance may require community participation and boundaries. Taken together, the chapters illustrate the importance of exit and voice in constructing and sustaining knowledge commons through appropriate personal information flows. They also shed light on the shortcomings of current notice-and-consent style regulation of social media platforms….(More)”.

What Is Mobility Data? Where Is It Used?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brief by Andrew J. Zahuranec, Stefaan Verhulst, Andrew Young, Aditi Ramesh, and Brennan Lake: “Mobility data is data about the geographic location of a device passively produced through normal activity. Throughout the pandemic, public health experts and public officials have used mobility data to understand patterns of COVID-19’s spread and the impact of disease control measures. However, privacy advocates and others have questioned the need for this data and raised concerns about the capacity of such data-driven tools to facilitate surveillance, improper data use, and other exploitative practices.

In April, The GovLab, Cuebiq, and the Open Data Institute released The Use of Mobility Data for Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic, which relied on several case studies to look at the opportunities, risks, and challenges associated with mobility data. Today, we hope to supplement that report with a new resource: a brief on what mobility data is and the different types of data it can include. The piece is a one-pager to allow decision-makers to easily read it. It provides real-world examples from the report to illustrate how different data types can be used in a responsible way…..(More)”.

How spooks are turning to superforecasting in the Cosmic Bazaar

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “Every morning for the past year, a group of British civil servants, diplomats, police officers and spies have woken up, logged onto a slick website and offered their best guess as to whether China will invade Taiwan by a particular date. Or whether Arctic sea ice will retrench by a certain amount. Or how far covid-19 infection rates will fall. These imponderables are part of Cosmic Bazaar, a forecasting tournament created by the British government to improve its intelligence analysis.

Since the website was launched in April 2020, more than 10,000 forecasts have been made by 1,300 forecasters, from 41 government departments and several allied countries. The site has around 200 regular forecasters, who must use only publicly available information to tackle the 30-40 questions that are live at any time. Cosmic Bazaar represents the gamification of intelligence. Users are ranked by a single, brutally simple measure: the accuracy of their predictions.

Forecasting tournaments like Cosmic Bazaar draw on a handful of basic ideas. One of them, as seen in this case, is the “wisdom of crowds”, a concept first illustrated by Francis Galton, a statistician, in 1907. Galton observed that in a contest to estimate the weight of an ox at a county fair, the median guess of nearly 800 people was accurate within 1% of the true figure.

Crowdsourcing, as this idea is now called, has been augmented by more recent research into whether and how people make good judgments. Experiments by Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania, and others, show that experts’ predictions are often no better than chance. Yet some people, dubbed “superforecasters”, often do make accurate predictions, largely because of the way they form judgments—such as having a commitment to revising predictions in light of new data, and being aware of typical human biases. Dr Tetlock’s ideas received publicity last year when Dominic Cummings, then an adviser to Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, endorsed his book and hired a controversial superforecaster to work at Mr Johnson’s office in Downing Street….(More)”.

Digital Inclusion is a Social Determinant of Health

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jill Castek et al: “Efforts to improve digital literacies and internet access are valuable tools to reduce health disparities. The costs of equipping a person to use the internet are substantially lower than treating health conditions, and the benefits are multiple….

Those who do not have access to affordable broadband internet services, digital devices, digital literacies training, and technical support, face numerous challenges video-conferencing with their doctor,  checking test results, filling prescriptions, and much more.  Many individuals require significant support developing the digital literacies needed to engage in telehealth with the greatest need among older individuals, racial/ethnic minorities, and low-income communities. Taken in context, the costs of equipping a person to use the internet are substantially lower than treating health conditions, and the benefits are both persistent and significant.2 

“Super” Social Determinants of Health

Digital literacies and internet connectivity have been called the “super social determinants of health” because they encompass all other social determinants of health (SDOH).  Access to information, supports, and services are increasingly, and sometimes exclusively, accessible only online.

The social determinants of health shown in Figure 1. Digital Literacies & Access, include the neighborhood and physical environment, economic sustainability, healthcare system, community and social context, food, and education.4  Together these factors impact an individual’s ability to access healthcare services, education, housing, transportation, online banking, and sustain relationships with family members and friends.  Digital literacies and access impacts all facets of a person’s life and affects behavioral and environmental outcomes such as shopping choices, housing, support systems, and health coverage….(More)”

Figure 1. Digital Literacies & Access. 

‘Master,’ ‘Slave’ and the Fight Over Offensive Terms in Computing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Kate Conger at the New York Times: “Anyone who joined a video call during the pandemic probably has a global volunteer organization called the Internet Engineering Task Force to thank for making the technology work.

The group, which helped create the technical foundations of the internet, designed the language that allows most video to run smoothly online. It made it possible for someone with a Gmail account to communicate with a friend who uses Yahoo, and for shoppers to safely enter their credit card information on e-commerce sites.

Now the organization is tackling an even thornier issue: getting rid of computer engineering terms that evoke racist history, like “master” and “slave” and “whitelist” and “blacklist.”

But what started as an earnest proposal has stalled as members of the task force have debated the history of slavery and the prevalence of racism in tech. Some companies and tech organizations have forged ahead anyway, raising the possibility that important technical terms will have different meanings to different people — a troubling proposition for an engineering world that needs broad agreement so technologies work together.

While the fight over terminology reflects the intractability of racial issues in society, it is also indicative of a peculiar organizational culture that relies on informal consensus to get things done.

The Internet Engineering Task Force eschews voting, and it often measures consensus by asking opposing factions of engineers to hum during meetings. The hums are then assessed by volume and ferocity. Vigorous humming, even from only a few people, could indicate strong disagreement, a sign that consensus has not yet been reached…(More)”.

Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank: “As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time—from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach—public interest technology—that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems. Through inspiring stories about successful projects ranging from a texting service for teenagers in crisis to a streamlined foster care system, the authors show how public interest technology can make the delivery of services to the public more effective and efficient.

At its heart, public interest technology means putting users at the center of the policymaking process, using data and metrics in a smart way, and running small experiments and pilot programs before scaling up. And while this approach may well involve the innovative use of digital technology, technology alone is no panacea—and some of the best solutions may even be decidedly low-tech.

Clear-eyed yet profoundly optimistic, Power to the Public presents a powerful blueprint for how government and nonprofits can help solve society’s most serious problems….(More)“

Mapping Career Causeways

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

User Guide by Nesta: “This user guide shows how providers of careers information advice and guidance, policymakers and employers can use our innovative data tools to support workers and job seekers as they navigate the labour market.

Nesta’s Mapping Career Causeways project, supported by J.P. Morgan as part of their New Skills at Work initiative, applies state-of-the-art data science methods to create an algorithm that recommends job transitions and retraining to workers, with a focus on supporting those at high risk of automation. The algorithm works by measuring the similarity between over 1,600 jobs, displayed in our interactive ‘map of occupations’, based on the skills and tasks that make up each role.

Following the publication of the Mapping Career Causeways report, data visualisation and open-source algorithm and codebase, we have developed a short user guide that demonstrates how you can take the insights and learnings from the Mapping Career Causeways project and implement them directly into your work….

The user guide shows how the Mapping Career Causeways research can be used to address common challenges identified by the stakeholders, such as:

  • Navigating the labour market can be overwhelming, and there is a need for a reliable source of insights (e.g. a tool) that helps to broaden a worker’s potential career opportunities whilst providing focused recommendations on the most valuable skills to invest in
  • There is no standardised data or a common ‘skills language’ to support career advice and guidance
  • There is a lack of understanding and clear data about which sectors are most at risk of automation, and which skills are most valuable for workers to invest in, in order to unlock lower-risk jobs
  • Most recruitment and transition practices rely heavily on relevant domain/sector experience and a worker’s contacts (i.e. who you know), and most employers do not take a skills-based approach to hiring
  • Fear, confidence and self esteem are significant barriers for workers to changing careers, in addition to barriers relating to time and finance
  • Localised information on training options, support for job seekers and live job opportunities would further enrich the model
  • Automation is just one of many trends that are changing the make-up and availability of jobs; other considerations such as digitalisation, the green transition, and regional factors must also be considered…(More)”.