Stefaan Verhulst

Swarm AI Outperforms in Stanford Medical Study

Curated on September 16, 2018December 11, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Stanford University School of Medicine and Unanimous AI presented a new study today showing that a small group of doctors, connected by intelligence algorithms that enable them to work together as a “hive mind,” could achieve higher diagnostic accuracy than the individual doctors or machine learning algorithms alone. The technology used is called Swarm AI and it empowers networked human groups to combine their individual insights in real-time, using AI algorithms to converge on optimal solutions.

As presented at the 2018 SIIM Conference on Machine Intelligence in Medical Imaging, the study tasked a group of experienced radiologists with diagnosing the presence of pneumonia in chest X-rays. This is one of the most widely performed imaging procedures in the US, with more than 1 million adults hospitalized with pneumonia each year. But, despite this prevalence, accurately diagnosing X-rays is highly challenging with significant variability across radiologists. This makes it both an optimal task for applying new AI technologies, and an important problem to solve for the medical community.

When generating diagnoses using Swarm AI technology, the average error rate was reduced by 33% compared to traditional diagnoses by individual practitioners. This is an exciting result, showing the potential of AI technologies to amplify the accuracy of human practitioners while maintaining their direct participation in the diagnostic process.

Swarm AI technology was also compared to the state-of-the-art in automated diagnosis using software algorithms that do not employ human practitioners. Currently, the best system in the world for the automated diagnosing of pneumonia from chest X-rays is the CheXNet system from Stanford University, which made headlines in 2017 by significantly outperforming individual practitioners using deep-learning derived algorithms.

The Swarm AI system, which combines real-time human insights with AI technology, was 22% more accurate in binary classification than the software-only CheXNet system. In other words, by connecting a group of radiologists into a medical “hive mind”, the hybrid human-machine system was able to outperform individual human doctors as well as the state-of-the-art in deep-learning derived algorithms….(More)”.

Rohingya turn to blockchain to solve identity crisis

Curated on September 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Skot Thayer and Alex Hern at the Guardian: “Rohingya refugees are turning to blockchain-type technology to help address one of their most existential threats: lack of officially-recognised identity.

Denied citizenship in their home country of Myanmar for decades, the Muslim minority was the target of a brutal campaign of violence by the military which culminated a year ago this week. A “clearance operation” led by Buddhist militia sent more than 700,000 Rohingya pouring over the border into Bangladesh, without passports or official ID.

The Myanmar government has since agreed to take the Rohingya back, but are refusing to grant them citizenship. Many Rohingya do not want to return and face life without a home or an identity. This growing crisis prompted Muhammad Noor and his team at the Rohingya Project to try to find a digital solution.

“Why does a centralised entity like a bank or government own my identity,” says Noor, a Rohingya community leader based in Kuala Lumpur. “Who are they to say if I am who I am?”

Using blockchain-based technology, Noor, is trialling the use of digital identity cards that aim to help Rohingya in Malaysia, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia access services such as banking and education. The hope is that successful trials might lead to a system that can help the community across southeast Asia.

Under the scheme, a blockchain database is used to record individual digital IDs, which can then be issued to people once they have taken a test to verify that they are genuine Rohingya….

Blockchain-based initiatives, such as the Rohingya Project, could eventually allow people to build the network of relationships necessary to participate in the modern global economy and prevent second and third generation “invisible” people from slipping into poverty. It could also allow refugees to send money across borders, bypassing high transaction fees.

In Jordan’s Azraq refugee camp, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is using blockchain and biometrics to help Syrian refugees to purchase groceries using a voucher system. This use of the technology allows the WFP to bypass bank fees.

But Al Rjula says privacy is still an issue. “The technology is maturing, yet implementation by startups and emerging tech companies is still lacking,” he says.

The involvement of a trendy technology such as blockchains can often be enough to secure the funding, attention and support that start-ups – whether for-profit or charitable – need to thrive. But companies such as Tykn still have to tackle plenty of the same issues as their old-fashioned database-using counterparts, from convincing governments and NGOs to use their services in the first place to working out how to make enough overhead to pay staff, while also dealing with the fickle issues of building on a cutting-edge platform.

Blockchain-based humanitarian initiatives will also need to reckon with the problem of accountability in their efforts to aid refugees and those trapped in the limbo of statelessness.

Dilek Genc, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who studies blockchain-type applications in humanitarian aid and development, saysif the aid community continues to push innovation using Silicon Valley’s creed of “fail fast and often,” and experiment on vulnerable peoples they will be fundamentally at odds with humanitarian principles and fail to address the political roots of issues facing refugees…(More)”.

Government for the Future Reflection and Vision for Tomorrow’s Leaders

Curated on September 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mark A. Abramson, Daniel J. Chenok and John M. Kamensky: “In recognition of its 20^th anniversary, The IBM Center for the Business of Government offers a retrospective of the most significant changes in government management during that period and looks forward over the next 20 years to offer alternative scenarios as to what government management might look like by the year 2040.

Part I will discuss significant management improvements in the federal government over the past 20 years, based in part on a crowdsourced survey of knowledgeable government officials and public administration experts in the field. It will draw on themes and topics examined in the 350 IBM Center reports published over the past two decades. Part II will outline alternative scenarios of how government might change over the coming 20 years. The scenarios will be developed based on a series of envisioning sessions which are bringing together practitioners and academics to examine the future. The scenarios will be supplemented with short essays on various topics. Part II will also include essays by winners of the Center’s Challenge Grant competition. Challenge Grant winners will be awarded grants to identify futuristic visions of government in 2040….(More)”.

Don’t forget people in the use of big data for development

Curated on September 15, 2018November 13, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Joshua Blumenstock at Nature: “Today, 95% of the global population has mobile-phone coverage, and the number of people who own a phone is rising fast (see ‘Dialling up’)¹. Phones generate troves of personal data on billions of people, including those who live on a few dollars a day. So aid organizations, researchers and private companies are looking at ways in which this ‘data revolution’ could transform international development.

Some businesses are starting to make their data and tools available to those trying to solve humanitarian problems. The Earth-imaging company Planet in San Francisco, California, for example, makes its high-resolution satellite pictures freely available after natural disasters so that researchers and aid organizations can coordinate relief efforts. Meanwhile, organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations are recruiting teams of data scientists to apply their skills in statistics and machine learning to challenges in international development.

But in the rush to find technological solutions to complex global problems there’s a danger of researchers and others being distracted by the technology and losing track of the key hardships and constraints that are unique to each local context. Designing data-enabled applications that work in the real world will require a slower approach that pays much more attention to the people behind the numbers…(More)”.

On International Day of Democracy, International Leaders Call for More Open Public Institutions

Curated on September 13, 2018May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “As the United Nations celebrates the International Day of Democracy on September 15 with its theme of “Democracy Under Strain,” The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering will unveil its CrowdLaw Manifesto to strengthen public participation in lawmaking by encouraging citizens to help build, shape, and influence the laws and policies that affect their daily lives.

Among its 12 calls to action to individuals, legislatures, researchers and technology designers, the manifesto encourages the public to demand and institutions to create new mechanisms to harness collective intelligence to improve the quality of lawmaking as well as more research on what works to build a global movement for participatory democracy.

The CrowdLaw Manifesto emerged from a collaborative effort of 20 international experts and CrowdLaw community members. At a convening held earlier this year by The GovLab at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy, government leaders, academics, NGOs, and technologists formulated the CrowdLaw Manifesto to detail the initiative’s foundational principles and to encourage greater implementation of CrowdLaw practices to improve governance through 21^st century technology and tools….

“The successes of the CrowdLaw concept – and its remarkably rapid adoption across the world by citizens seeking to affect change – exemplify the powerful force that academia can exert when working in concert with government and citizens,” said NYU Tandon Dean Jelena Kovačević. “On behalf of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, I proudly sign the CrowdLaw Manifesto and congratulate The GovLab and its collaborators for creating these digital tools and momentum for good government.”…(More)”.

Safe artificial intelligence requires cultural intelligence

Curated on September 13, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Gillian Hadfield at TechCrunch: “Knowledge, to paraphrase British journalist Miles Kington, is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing there’s a norm against putting it in a fruit salad.

Any kind of artificial intelligence clearly needs to possess great knowledge. But if we are going to deploy AI agents widely in society at large — on our highways, in our nursing homes and schools, in our businesses and governments — we will need machines to be wise as well as smart.

Researchers who focus on a problem known as AI safety or AI alignment define artificial intelligence as machines that can meet or beat human performance at a specific cognitive task. Today’s self-driving cars and facial recognition algorithms fall into this narrow type of AI.

But some researchers are working to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) — machines that can outperform humans at any cognitive task. We don’t know yet when or even if AGI will be achieved, but it’s clear that the research path is leading to ever more powerful and autonomous AI systems performing more and more tasks in our economies and societies.

Building machines that can perform any cognitive task means figuring out how to build AI that can not only learn about things like the biology of tomatoes but also about our highly variable and changing systems of norms about things like what we do with tomatoes.

Humans live lives populated by a multitude of norms, from how we eat, dress and speak to how we share information, treat one another and pursue our goals.

For AI to be truly powerful will require machines to comprehend that norms can vary tremendously from group to group, making them seem unnecessary, yet it can be critical to follow them in a given community.

Tomatoes in fruit salads may seem odd to the Brits for whom Kington was writing, but they are perfectly fine if you are cooking for Koreans or a member of the culinary avant-garde. And while it may seem minor, serving them the wrong way to a particular guest can cause confusion, disgust, even anger. That’s not a recipe for healthy future relationships….(More)”.

Our shared reality is fraying

Curated on September 12, 2018October 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Arie Kruglanski at The Conversation: “The concept of truth is under assault, but our troubles with truth aren’t exactly new.

What’s different is that in the past, debates about the status of truth primarily took place in intellectual cafes and academic symposia among philosophers. These days, uncertainty about what to believe is endemic – a pervasive feature of everyday life for everyday people.

“Truth isn’t truth” – Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, famously said in August. His statement wasn’t as paradoxical as it might have appeared. It means that our beliefs, what we hold as true, are ultimately unprovable, rather than objectively verifiable.

Many philosophers would agree. Nevertheless, voluminous research in psychology, my own field of study, has shown that the idea of truth is key to humans interacting normally with the world and other people in it. Humans need to believe that there is truth in order to maintain relationships, institutions and society.

Truth’s indispensability

Beliefs about what is true are typically shared by others in one’s society: fellow members of one’s culture, one’s nation or one’s profession.

Psychological research in a forthcoming book by Tory Higgins, “Shared Reality: What Makes Us Strong and Tears Us Apart,” attests that shared beliefs help us collectively understand how the world works and provide a moral compass for living in it together.

Cue our current crisis of confidence.

Distrust of the U.S. government, which has been growing since the 1960s, has spread to nearly all other societal institutions, even those once held as beyond reproach.

From the media to the medical and scientific communities to the Catholic Church, there is a gnawing sense that none of the once hallowed information sources can be trusted.

When we can no longer make sense of the world together, a crippling insecurity ensues. The internet inundates us with a barrage of conflicting advice about nutrition, exercise, religion, politics and sex. People develop anxiety and confusion about their purpose and direction.

In the extreme, a lost sense of reality is a defining feature of psychosis, a major mental illness.

A society that has lost its shared reality is also unwell. In the past, people turned to widely respected societal institutions for information: the government, major news outlets, trusted communicators like Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley or Edward R. Murrow. Those days are gone, alas. Now, just about every source is suspect of bias and serving interests other than the truth. In consequence, people increasingly believe what they wish to believe, or what they find pleasing and reassuring….(More)”.

Resource Guide to Data Governance and Security

Curated on September 11, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP): “Any organization that collects, analyzes, or disseminates data should establish formal systems to manage data responsibly, protect confidentiality, and document data files and procedures. In doing so, organizations will build a reputation for integrity and facilitate appropriate interpretation and data sharing, factors that contribute to an organization’s long-term sustainability.

To help groups improve their data policies and practices, this guide assembles lessons from the experiences of partners in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership network and similar organizations. The guide presents advice and annotated resources for the three parts of a data governance program: protecting privacy and human subjects, ensuring data security, and managing the data life cycle. While applicable for non-sensitive data, the guide is geared for managing confidential data, such as data used in integrated data systems or Pay-for-Success programs….(More)”.

Ethics and Data Science

Curated on September 11, 2018May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

(Open) Ebook by Mike Loukides, Hilary Mason and DJ Patil: “As the impact of data science continues to grow on society there is an increased need to discuss how data is appropriately used and how to address misuse. Yet, ethical principles for working with data have been available for decades. The real issue today is how to put those principles into action. With this report, authors Mike Loukides, Hilary Mason, and DJ Patil examine practical ways for making ethical data standards part of your work every day.

To help you consider all of possible ramifications of your work on data projects, this report includes:

A sample checklist that you can adapt for your own procedures
Five framing guidelines (the Five C’s) for building data products: consent, clarity, consistency, control, and consequences
Suggestions for building ethics into your data-driven culture

Now is the time to invest in a deliberate practice of data ethics, for better products, better teams, and better outcomes….(More)”.