Stefaan Verhulst

MITPress: “In this book, Edward Ashford Lee makes a bold claim: that the creators of digital technology have an unsurpassed medium for creativity. Technology has advanced to the point where progress seems limited not by physical constraints but the human imagination. Writing for both literate technologists and numerate humanists, Lee makes a case for engineering—creating technology—as a deeply intellectual and fundamentally creative process. Explaining why digital technology has been so transformative and so liberating, Lee argues that the real power of technology stems from its partnership with humans.

Lee explores the ways that engineers use models and abstraction to build inventive artificial worlds and to give us things that we never dreamed of—for example, the ability to carry in our pockets everything humans have ever published. But he also attempts to counter the runaway enthusiasm of some technology boosters who claim everything in the physical world is a computation—that even such complex phenomena as human cognition are software operating on digital data. Lee argues that the evidence for this is weak, and the likelihood that nature has limited itself to processes that conform to today’s notion of digital computation is remote.

Lee goes on to argue that artificial intelligence’s goal of reproducing human cognitive functions in computers vastly underestimates the potential of computers. In his view, technology is coevolving with humans. It augments our cognitive and physical capabilities while we nurture, develop, and propagate the technology itself. Complementarity is more likely than competition….(More)”.

Paper by Guy Grossman, Melina Platas and Jonathan Rodden: “We examine the effect on service delivery outcomes of a new information communication technology (ICT) platform that allows citizens to send free and anonymous messages to local government officials, thus reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of communication about public services. In particular, we use a field experiment to assess the extent to which the introduction of this ICT platform improved monitoring by the district, effort by service providers, and inputs at service points in health, education and water in Arua District, Uganda. Despite relatively high levels of system uptake, enthusiasm of district officials, and anecdotal success stories, we find evidence of only marginal and uneven short-term improvements in health and water services, and no discernible long-term effects. Relatively few messages from citizens provided specific, actionable information about service provision within the purview and resource constraints of district officials, and users were often discouraged by officials’ responses. Our findings suggest that for crowd-sourced ICT programs to move from isolated success stories to long-term accountability enhancement, the quality and specific content of reports and responses provided by users and officials is centrally important….(More)”.

Paper by Adam D. Thierer, Andrea Castillo and Raymond Russell: “There is growing interest in the market potential of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and applications as well as in the potential risks that these technologies might pose. As a result, questions are being raised about the legal and regulatory governance of AI, machine learning, “autonomous” systems, and related robotic and data technologies. Fearing concerns about labor market effects, social inequality, and even physical harm, some have called for precautionary regulations that could have the effect of limiting AI development and deployment. In this paper, we recommend a different policy framework for AI technologies. At this nascent stage of AI technology development, we think a better case can be made for prudence, patience, and a continuing embrace of “permissionless innovation” as it pertains to modern digital technologies. Unless a compelling case can be made that a new invention will bring serious harm to society, innovation should be allowed to continue unabated, and problems, if they develop at all, can be addressed later…(More)”.

Springwise: “MarHub is a new chatbot developed by students at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Businessto help asylum seekers through the complicated process of applying to become an official refugee – which can take up to 18 months – and to avoid using smugglers.

Finding the right information for the asylum process isn’t easy, and although most asylum seekers are in possession of a smartphone, a lot of the information is either missing or out of date. MarHub is designed to help with that, as it will walk the user through what they can expect and also how to present their case. MarHub is also expandable, so that new information or regulations can be quickly added to make it a hub of useful information.

The concept of MarHub was born in late 2016, in response to the Hult Prize social enterprise challenge, which was focusing on refugees for 2017. The development team quickly realized that there was a gap in the market which they felt they could fill. MarHub will initially be made available through Facebook, and then later on WhatsApp and text messaging….(More)”.

Before launching its second round of global goals—the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—the United Nations convened a High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. As part of its final report, the Panel called for a “data revolution” and recommended the formation of an independent body to lead the charge.¹The report resulted in the creation of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD)—an independent group of countries, companies, data communities, and NGOs—and the SDG Data Labs, a private initiative partnered with the GPSDD. In doing so the United Nations and its partners signaled broad interest in data and evidence-based policymaking at a high level. In fact, the GPSDD calls for the “revolution in data” by addressing the “crisis of non-existent, inaccessible or unreliable data.”² As this report shows, this is easier said than done.

This report defines the data revolution as an unprecedented increase in the volume and types of data—and the subsequent demand for them—thanks to the ongoing yet uneven proliferation of new technologies. This revolution is allowing governments, companies, researchers, and citizens to monitor progress and drive action, often with real-time, dynamic, disaggregated data. Much work will be needed to make sure the data revolution reaches developing countries facing difficult challenges (i.e., before the data revolution fully becomes the data revolution for sustainable development). It is important to think of the revolution as a multistep process, beginning with building basic knowledge and awareness of the value of data. This is followed by a more specific focus on public private partnerships, opportunities, and constraints regarding collection and utilization of data for evidence-based policy decisions….

This report provides the following recommendations to the international community to play a constructive role in the data revolution:

• Don’t fixate on big data alone. Focus on the foundation necessary to facilitate leapfrogs around all types of data: small, big, and everywhere in between.
• Increase funding for capacity building as part of an expansion of broader educational development priorities.
• Highlight, share, and support enlightened government-driven approaches to data.
• Increase funding for the data revolution and coordinate donor efforts.
• Coordinate UN data revolution-related activities closely with an expanded GPSDD.
• Secure consensus on data sharing, ownership, and privacy-related international standards….(More)”.

Book edited by Aeron Davis: “...argues for the value and importance of shared, publicly accessible knowledge, and suggests that the erosion of its most visible forms, including public service broadcasting, education, and the network of public libraries, has worrying outcomes for democracy.

With contributions from both activists and academics, this collection of short, sharp essays focuses on different aspects of public knowledge, from libraries and education to news media and public policy. Together, the contributors record the stresses and strains placed upon public knowledge by funding cuts and austerity, the new digital economy, quantification and target-setting, neoliberal politics, and inequality. These pressures, the authors contend, not only hinder democracies, but also undermine markets, economies, and social institutions and spaces everywhere.

Covering areas of international public concern, these polemical, accessible texts include reflections on the fate of schools and education, the takeover of public institutions by private interests, and the corruption of news and information in the financial sector. They cover the compromised Greek media during recent EU negotiations, the role played by media and political elites in the Irish property bubble, the compromising of government policy by corporate interests in the United States and Korea, and the squeeze on public service media in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States.

Individually and collectively, these pieces spell out the importance of maintaining public, shared knowledge in all its forms, and offer a rallying cry for doing so, asserting the need for strong public, financial, and regulatory support….(More)”

MIT News: “As Hurricane Irma bears down on the U.S., the MIT Urban Risk Lab has launched a free, open-source platform that will help residents and government officials track flooding in Broward County, Florida. The platform, RiskMap.us, is being piloted to enable both residents and emergency managers to obtain better information on flooding conditions in near-real time.

Residents affected by flooding can add information to the publicly available map via popular social media channels. Using Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram, users submit reports by sending a direct message to the Risk Map chatbot. The chatbot replies to users with a one-time link through which they can upload information including location, flood depth, a photo, and description.

Residents and government officials can view the map to see recent flood reports to understand changing flood conditions across the county. Tomas Holderness, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Architecture, led the design of the system. “This project shows the importance that citizen data has to play in emergencies,” he says. “By connecting residents and emergency managers via social messaging, our map helps keep people informed and improve response times.”…

The Urban Risk Lab also piloted the system in Indonesia — where the project is called PetaBencana.id, or “Map Disaster” — during a large flood event on Feb. 20, 2017.

During the flooding, over 300,000 users visited the public website in 24 hours, and the map was integrated into the Uber application to help drivers avoid flood waters. The project in Indonesia is supported by a grant from USAID and is working in collaboration with the Indonesian Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Pacific Disaster Centre, and the Humanitarian Open Street Map Team.

The Urban Risk Lab team is also working in India on RiskMap.in….(More)”.

Elizabeth E. Joh at William & Mary Bill of Rights J. (2017 Forthcoming): “Discussions of predictive algorithms used by the police tend to assume the police are merely end users of big data. Accordingly, police departments are consumers and clients of big data — not much different than users of Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, or Facebook. Yet this assumption about big data policing contains a flaw. Police are not simply end users of big data. They generate the information that big data programs rely upon. This essay explains why predictive policing programs can’t be fully understood without an acknowledgment of the role police have in creating its inputs. Their choices, priorities, and even omissions become the inputs algorithms use to forecast crime. The filtered nature of crime data matters because these programs promise cutting edge results, but may deliver analyses with hidden limitations….(More)”.

Book by Joshua A. T. Fairfield: “… explains the crisis of digital ownership – how and why we no longer control our smartphones or software-enable devices, which are effectively owned by software and content companies. In two years we will not own our ‘smart’ televisions which will also be used by advertisers to listen in to our living rooms. In the coming decade, if we do not take back our ownership rights, the same will be said of our self-driving cars and software-enabled homes. We risk becoming digital peasants, owned by software and advertising companies, not to mention overreaching governments. Owned should be read by anyone wanting to know more about the loss of our property rights, the implications for our privacy rights and how we can regain control of both….(More)”.