Cities Are at the Forefront of AI and Civic Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Hollie Russon Gilman and Sarah Jacob: “…cities worldwide are already adopting AI for everyday governance needs. Buenos Aires is integrating communication with residents through Boti, an AI chatbot accessible via WhatsApp. Over 5 million residents are using the chatbot everyday month, with some months upwards of 11 million users. Boti connects residents with city services such as bike sharing or social care programs or reports. Unlike other AI systems with a closed loop, Boti can connect externally to help residents with other government services. For more sensitive issues, such as domestic abuse, Boti can connect residents with a human operator. AI, in this context, offers residents a convenient means to efficiently engage with city resources and communicate with city employees.

Another example of AI improving people’s everyday lives is SomosUna, a partnership between the Inter American Development Bank and Next2MyLife, aims to address gender-based violence in Uruguay. In response to the rise in gender-based violence during and after Covid, this initiative aims to prevent violence through a network of support and “helpers” which includes 1) training 2) technology and 3) a community of volunteers. This initiative will leverage AI technology to enhance its support network, advancing preventative measures and providing immediate assistance.

While AI can foster engagement, local government officials recognize that they must pre-engage the public to determine the role that AI should play in civic life across diverse cities. This pre-engagement and education will inform the ethical standards and considerations against which AI will be assessed.

The EU’s ITHACA project, for example, explores the application of AI in civic participation and local governance…(More)”… See also: AI Localism.

First post: A history of online public messaging

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jeremy Reimer: From BBS to Facebook, here’s how messaging platforms have changed over the years…

People have been leaving public messages since the first artists painted hunting scenes on cave walls. But it was the invention of electricity that forever changed the way we talked to each other. In 1844, the first message was sent via telegraph. Samuel Morse, who created the binary Morse Code decades before electronic computers were even possible, tapped out, “What hath God wrought?” It was a prophetic first post.

World War II accelerated the invention of digital computers, but they were primarily single-use machines, designed to calculate artillery firing tables or solve scientific problems. As computers got more powerful, the idea of time-sharing became attractive. Computers were expensive, and they spent most of their time idle, waiting for a user to enter keystrokes at a terminal. Time-sharing allowed many people to interact with a single computer at the same time…(More)”.

Debugging Tech Journalism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Timothy B. Lee: “A huge proportion of tech journalism is characterized by scandals, sensationalism, and shoddy research. Can we fix it?

In November, a few days after Sam Altman was fired — and then rehired — as CEO of OpenAI, Reuters reported on a letter that may have played a role in Altman’s ouster. Several staffers reportedly wrote to the board of directors warning about “a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity.”

The discovery: an AI system called Q* that can solve grade-school math problems.

“Researchers consider math to be a frontier of generative AI development,” the Reuters journalists wrote. Large language models are “good at writing and language translation,” but “conquering the ability to do math — where there is only one right answer — implies AI would have greater reasoning capabilities resembling human intelligence.”

This was a bit of a head-scratcher. Computers have been able to perform arithmetic at superhuman levels for decades. The Q* project was reportedly focused on word problems, which have historically been harder than arithmetic for computers to solve. Still, it’s not obvious that solving them would unlock human-level intelligence.

The Reuters article left readers with a vague impression that Q could be a huge breakthrough in AI — one that might even “threaten humanity.” But it didn’t provide readers with the context to understand what Q actually was — or to evaluate whether feverish speculation about it was justified.

For example, the Reuters article didn’t mention research OpenAI published last May describing a technique for solving math problems by breaking them down into small steps. In a December article, I dug into this and other recent research to help to illuminate what OpenAI is likely working on: a framework that would enable AI systems to search through a large space of possible solutions to a problem…(More)”.

Shaping the Future of Learning: The Role of AI in Education 4.0

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

WEF Report: “This report explores the potential for artificial intelligence to benefit educators, students and teachers. Case studies show how AI can personalize learning experiences, streamline administrative tasks, and integrate into curricula.

The report stresses the importance of responsible deployment, addressing issues like data privacy and equitable access. Aimed at policymakers and educators, it urges stakeholders to collaborate to ensure AI’s positive integration into education systems worldwide leads to improved outcomes for all…(More)”

The Secret Life of Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert: “…explore the many unpredictable, and often surprising, ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact our culture and society in the age of global networks. The authors build on this basic premise: no matter what form data takes, and what purpose we think it’s being used for, data will always have a secret life. How this data will be used, by other people in other times and places, has profound implications for every aspect of our lives—from our intimate relationships to our professional lives to our political systems.

With the secret uses of data in mind, Sinnreich and Gilbert interview dozens of experts to explore a broad range of scenarios and contexts—from the playful to the profound to the problematic. Unlike most books about data and society that focus on the short-term effects of our immense data usage, The Secret Life of Data focuses primarily on the long-term consequences of humanity’s recent rush toward digitizing, storing, and analyzing every piece of data about ourselves and the world we live in. The authors advocate for “slow fixes” regarding our relationship to data, such as creating new laws and regulations, ethics and aesthetics, and models of production for our datafied society.

Cutting through the hype and hopelessness that so often inform discussions of data and society, The Secret Life of Data clearly and straightforwardly demonstrates how readers can play an active part in shaping how digital technology influences their lives and the world at large…(More)”

AI chatbots refuse to produce ‘controversial’ output − why that’s a free speech problem

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jordi Calvet-Bademunt and Jacob Mchangama: “Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience.

The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?…In a recent report, we found that generative AI has important shortcomings regarding freedom of expression and access to information.

Generative AI is a type of AI that creates content, like text or images, based on the data it has been trained with. In particular, we found that the use policies of major chatbots do not meet United Nations standards. In practice, this means that AI chatbots often censor output when dealing with issues the companies deem controversial. Without a solid culture of free speech, the companies producing generative AI tools are likely to continue to face backlash in these increasingly polarized times…(More)”.

‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Andrew Anthony: “Two weeks ago it was quietly announced that the Future of Humanity Institute, the renowned multidisciplinary research centre in Oxford, no longer had a future. It shut down without warning on 16 April. Initially there was just a brief statement on its website stating it had closed and that its research may continue elsewhere within and outside the university.

The institute, which was dedicated to studying existential risks to humanity, was founded in 2005 by the Swedish-born philosopher Nick Bostrom and quickly made a name for itself beyond academic circles – particularly in Silicon Valley, where a number of tech billionaires sang its praises and provided financial support.

Bostrom is perhaps best known for his bestselling 2014 book Superintelligence, which warned of the existential dangers of artificial intelligence, but he also gained widespread recognition for his 2003 academic paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”. The paper argued that over time humans were likely to develop the ability to make simulations that were indistinguishable from reality, and if this was the case, it was possible that it had already happened and that we are the simulations….

Among the other ideas and movements that have emerged from the FHI are longtermism – the notion that humanity should prioritise the needs of the distant future because it theoretically contains hugely more lives than the present – and effective altruism (EA), a utilitarian approach to maximising global good.

These philosophies, which have intermarried, inspired something of a cult-like following,…

Torres has come to believe that the work of the FHI and its offshoots amounts to what they call a “noxious ideology” and “eugenics on steroids”. They refuse to see Bostrom’s 1996 comments as poorly worded juvenilia, but indicative of a brutal utilitarian view of humanity. Torres notes that six years after the email thread, Bostrom wrote a paper on existential risk that helped launch the longtermist movement, in which he discusses “dysgenic pressures” – dysgenic is the opposite of eugenic. Bostrom wrote:

“Currently it seems that there is a negative correlation in some places between intellectual achievement and fertility. If such selection were to operate over a long period of time, we might evolve into a less brainy but more fertile species, homo philoprogenitus (‘lover of many offspring’).”…(More)”.

Being Human in Digital Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Myria Georgiou: “…sets out to investigate the new configuration of social order that is taking shape in today’s cities. Although routed through extractive datafication, compulsive connectivity, and regulatory AI technologies, this digital order nonetheless displaces technocentrism and instead promotes new visions of humanism, all in the name of freedom, diversity, and sustainability. But the digital order emerges in the midst of neoliberal instability and crises, resulting in a plurality of contrasting responses to securing digitally mediated human progress. While corporate, media, and state actors mobilize such positive sociotechnical imaginaries to promise digitally mediated human progress, urban citizens and social movements propose alternative pathways to autonomy and dignity through and sometimes against digital technologies.

Investigating the dynamic workings of technology and power from a transnational and comparative perspective, this book reveals the contradictory claims and struggles for the future of digital cities and their humanity. In doing so, it will enrich understandings of digital urbanism, critical data studies, and critical humanist studies.​..(More)”.

Lethal AI weapons are here: how can we control them?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by David Adam: “The development of lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs), including AI-equipped drones, is on the rise. The US Department of Defense, for example, has earmarked US$1 billion so far for its Replicator programme, which aims to build a fleet of small, weaponized autonomous vehicles. Experimental submarines, tanks and ships have been made that use AI to pilot themselves and shoot. Commercially available drones can use AI image recognition to zero in on targets and blow them up. LAWs do not need AI to operate, but the technology adds speed, specificity and the ability to evade defences. Some observers fear a future in which swarms of cheap AI drones could be dispatched by any faction to take out a specific person, using facial recognition.

Warfare is a relatively simple application for AI. “The technical capability for a system to find a human being and kill them is much easier than to develop a self-driving car. It’s a graduate-student project,” says Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a prominent campaigner against AI weapons. He helped to produce a viral 2017 video called Slaughterbots that highlighted the possible risks.

The emergence of AI on the battlefield has spurred debate among researchers, legal experts and ethicists. Some argue that AI-assisted weapons could be more accurate than human-guided ones, potentially reducing both collateral damage — such as civilian casualties and damage to residential areas — and the numbers of soldiers killed and maimed, while helping vulnerable nations and groups to defend themselves. Others emphasize that autonomous weapons could make catastrophic mistakes. And many observers have overarching ethical concerns about passing targeting decisions to an algorithm…(More)”

The Future Data Economy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change: “…summarizes the ideas and recommendations of a year of research into the possibilities of creating a data economy that is fair, competitive and secure, carried out together with experts in the field such as Andrea Renda and Stefaan Verhulst.

According to the report, the data economy represents “a fundamental reconfiguration of how value is generated, exchanged, and understood in our world today” but it remains deeply misunderstood:

  • The authors argue that data’s particular characteristics make it different from other commodities and therefore more difficult to regulate.
  • Optimizing data flows defies the sort of one-size-fits-all solutions that policymakers tend to search for in other domains, requiring instead a more nuanced, case-by-case approach. 
  • Policymakers need to strike a delicate balance between making data sufficiently accessible to foster innovation, competition, and economic growth, while regulating its access and use to protect privacy, security, and consumer rights.

The report identifies additional overarching principles that lay the groundwork for a more coherent regulatory framework and a more robust social contract in the future data economy:

  • A paradigm shift towards greater collaboration on all fronts to address the challenges and harness the opportunities of the data economy.
  • Greater data literacy at all levels of society to make better decisions, manage risks more effectively, and harness the potential of data responsibly.
  • Regaining social trust, not only a moral imperative but also a prerequisite for the long-term sustainability and viability of data governance models.

To realize this vision, the report advances 15 specific recommendations for policymakers, including:

  • Enshrining people’s digital rights through robust regulatory measures that empower them with genuine control over their digital experiences.
  • Investing in data stewards to increase companies’ ability to recognize opportunities for collaboration and respond to external data requests. 
  • Designing liability frameworks to properly identify responsibility in cases of data misuse…(More)”