Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Robert H. Frank: “Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street—our environments are themselves products of our behavior. Under the Influence explains how to unlock the latent power of social context. It reveals how our environments encourage smoking, bullying, tax cheating, sexual predation, problem drinking, and wasteful energy use. We are building bigger houses, driving heavier cars, and engaging in a host of other activities that threaten the planet—mainly because that’s what friends and neighbors do.

In the wake of the hottest years on record, only robust measures to curb greenhouse gases promise relief from more frequent and intense storms, droughts, flooding, wildfires, and famines. Robert Frank describes how the strongest predictor of our willingness to support climate-friendly policies, install solar panels, or buy an electric car is the number of people we know who have already done so. In the face of stakes that could not be higher, the book explains how we could redirect trillions of dollars annually in support of carbon-free energy sources, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone….(More)”.

An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of craigslist

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jessa Lingel: “Begun by Craig Newmark as an e-mail to some friends about cool events happening around San Francisco, craigslist is now the leading classifieds service on the planet. It is also a throwback to the early internet. The website has barely seen an upgrade since it launched in 1996. There are no banner ads. The company doesn’t profit off your data. An Internet for the People explores how people use craigslist to buy and sell, find work, and find love—and reveals why craigslist is becoming a lonely outpost in an increasingly corporatized web.

Drawing on interviews with craigslist insiders and ordinary users, Jessa Lingel looks at the site’s history and values, showing how it has mostly stayed the same while the web around it has become more commercial and far less open. She examines craigslist’s legal history, describing the company’s courtroom battles over issues of freedom of expression and data privacy, and explains the importance of locality in the social relationships fostered by the site. More than an online garage sale, job board, or dating site, craigslist holds vital lessons for the rest of the web. It is a website that values user privacy over profits, ease of use over slick design, and an ethos of the early web that might just hold the key to a more open, transparent, and democratic internet….(More)”.

Assessing the Returns on Investment in Data Openness and Transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Megumi Kubota and Albert Zeufack: “This paper investigates the potential benefits for a country from investing in data transparency. The paper shows that increased data transparency can bring substantive returns in lower costs of external borrowing.

This result is obtained by estimating the impact of public data transparency on sovereign spreads conditional on the country’s level of institutional quality and public and external debt. While improving data transparency alone reduces the external borrowing costs for a country, the return is much higher when combined with stronger institutional quality and lower public and external debt. Similarly, the returns on investing in data transparency are higher when a country’s integration to the global economy deepens, as captured by trade and financial openness.

Estimation of an instrumental variable regression shows that Sub-Saharan African countries could have saved up to 14.5 basis points in sovereign bond spreads and decreased their external debt burden by US$405.4 million (0.02 percent of gross domestic product) in 2018, if their average level of data transparency was that of a country in the top quartile of the upper-middle-income country category. At the country level, Angola could have reduced its external debt burden by around US$73.6 million….(More)”.

The New City Regulators: Platform and Public Values in Smart and Sharing Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sofia Ranchordás and Catalina Goanta: “Cities are increasingly influenced by novel and cosmopolitan values advanced by transnational technology providers and digital platforms. These values which are often visible in the advancement of the sharing economy and smart cities, may differ from the traditional public values protected by national and local laws and policies. This article contrasts the public values created by digital platforms in cities with the democratic and social national values that the platform society is leaving behind.

It innovates by showing how co-regulation can balance public values with platform values. In this article, we argue that despite the value-creation benefits produced by the digital platforms under analysis, public authorities should be aware of the risks of technocratic discourses and potential conflicts between platform and local values. In this context, we suggest a normative framework which enhances the need for a new kind of knowledge-service creation in the form of local public-interest technology. Moreover, our framework proposes a negotiated contractual system that seeks to balance platform values with public values in an attempt to address the digital enforcement problem driven by the functional sovereignty role of platforms….(More)”.

Nudge and the European Union

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Alberto Alemanno: “Europe has largely been absent from the US-dominated debate surrounding the introduction of nudge-type interventions in policy-making. Yet the European Union and some of its Member States are exploring the possibility of informing their policy action with behavioural insights. While a great deal of academic attention is currently been paid to the philosophical, ethical and other abstract implications of behavioural-informed regulation, such as those concerning autonomy, dignity and moral development, this chapter charts and systematizes the incipient European Nudge discourse.

Besides a few isolated initiatives displaying some behavioural considerations (e.g. consumer rights, revised tobacco products directive, sporadic behavioural remedies in competition law), the EU – similarly to its own Member States – has not yet shown a general commitment to systematically integrate behavioural insights into policy-making. Given the potential of this innovative regulatory approach to attain effective, low-cost and choice-preserving policies, such a stance seems surprising, especially when measured against growing citizen mistrust towards EU policy action. At a time in which some EU countries are calling for a repatriation of powers and the European Commission promises to redefine – in the framework of its Better Regulation agenda – the relationships between the Union and its citizens, nudging might provide a promising way forward. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, this promise has not only been shared by the 27 remaining Member State but also represents one of their major priorities . Yet with promises come challenges too.

The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2 sets the scene by discussing the growing appeal of nudging among policymakers within and across Europe. Section 3 introduces the notion of behavioural policymaking and contrasts it with that of nudging. Section 4 describes the early and rather timid attempts at integrating behavioural insights into EU policymaking and identifies some domestic experiences. Section 5 discusses the institutional and methodological efforts undertaken by the EU and some of its member states to embrace behavioural policymaking. In turn, section 6 discusses the major difficulties of integrating behavioural insights into EU policymaking and offers some concluding remarks….(More)”

News as Surveillance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Erin Carroll: “As inhabitants of the Information Age, we are increasingly aware of the amount and kind of data that technology platforms collect on us. Far less publicized, however, is how much data news organizations collect on us as we read the news online and how they allow third parties to collect that personal data as well. A handful of studies by computer scientists reveal that, as a group, news websites are among the Internet’s worst offenders when it comes to tracking their visitors.

On the one hand, this surveillance is unsurprising. It is capitalism at work. The press’s business model has long been advertising-based. Yet, today this business model raises particular First Amendment concerns. The press, a named beneficiary of the First Amendment and a First Amendment institution, is gathering user reading history. This is a violation of what legal scholars call “intellectual privacy”—a right foundational to our First Amendment free speech rights.

And because of the perpetrator, this surveillance has the potential to cause far-reaching harms. Not only does it injure the individual reader or citizen, it injures society. News consumption helps each of us engage in the democratic process. It is, in fact, practically a prerequisite to our participation. Moreover, for an institution whose success is dependent on its readers’ trust, one that checks abuses of power, this surveillance seems like a special brand of betrayal.

Rather than an attack on journalists or journalism, this Essay is an attack on a particular press business model. It is also a call to grapple with it before the press faces greater public backlash. Originally given as the keynote for the Washburn Law Journal’s symposium, The Future of Cyber Speech, Media, and Privacy, this Essay argues for transforming and diversifying press business models and offers up other suggestions for minimizing the use of news as surveillance…(More)”.

‘Regulatory Gaming’ – A Look Into the European Union’s Attempts to Engage Citizens With Playful Design

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gianluca Sgueo: “What will democratic systems in the European Union (EU) look like in the next decade and beyond? Will tech-savvy policy-makers respond to the demands of citizens in an effective and timely manner? Or will the much-celebrated ‘co-creation’ of public policies via digital tools continue to remain an empty slogan?

In this Chapter, we move from a broad reflection on the impact that technology is having on all levels of society, and particularly on human relations, to an analysis of the role of technology in the policy cycle. We claim that technology has dramatically changed both the number of ‘connections’ between citizens and public regulators, and their quality. We also argue that the outcomes of this enhanced interconnectivity have been uneven, and the results not always positive.

Overall, citizens (and corporations) have benefited from the enhanced ‘access’ they have gained vis-à-vis public authorities through new communication channels. These benefits, however, have not been mirrored by equally significant progresses in design and implementation of public policy. Public authorities have struggled with the impact of new technologies on policy-making.

Communities and citizens now expect public regulators to respond both immediately and effectively to their demands. However, for the most part public regulators have been unable or unwilling to effectively harness new technologies to foster participatory and inclusive governance. As a result, the legitimacy of public regulators has been politically and legally challenged by dissatisfied communities and stakeholders.

The chapter focuses on the EU, which is often accused of not being inclusive or democratic. As EU institutional responsibilities have expanded over time, calls for greater openness have increased. Conventional narratives of the EU’s democratic deficit paint a picture of a dysfunctional decision-making system run by elites located in Brussels. In reality, we claim in this chapter, EU institutions continually seek to enhance and increase interactions with stakeholders, with experimental efforts having intensified over the last decade….(More)”.

Principled Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Consensus in Ethical and Rights-Based Approaches to Principles for AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Fjeld, Jessica and Achten, Nele and Hilligoss, Hannah and Nagy, Adam and Srikumar, Madhulika: “The rapid spread of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has precipitated a rise in ethical and human rights-based frameworks intended to guide the development and use of these technologies. Despite the proliferation of these “AI principles,” there has been little scholarly focus on understanding these efforts either individually or as contextualized within an expanding universe of principles with discernible trends.

To that end, this white paper and its associated data visualization compare the contents of thirty-six prominent AI principles documents side-by-side. This effort uncovered a growing consensus around eight key thematic trends: privacy, accountability, safety and security, transparency and explainability, fairness and non-discrimination, human control of technology, professional responsibility, and promotion of human values.

Underlying this “normative core,” our analysis examined the forty-seven individual principles that make up the themes, detailing notable similarities and differences in interpretation found across the documents. In sharing these observations, it is our hope that policymakers, advocates, scholars, and others working to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of AI will be better positioned to build on existing efforts and to push the fractured, global conversation on the future of AI toward consensus…(More)”.

Why It’s So Hard for Users to Control Their Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Bhaskar Chakravorti at the Harvard Business Review: “A recent IBM study found that 81% of consumers say they have become more concerned about how their data is used online. But most users continue to hand over their data online and tick consent boxes impatiently, giving rise to a “privacy paradox,” where users’ concerns aren’t reflected in their behaviors. It’s a daunting challenge for regulators and companies alike to navigate the future of data governance.

In my view, we’re missing a system that defines and grants users “digital agency” — the ability to own the rights to their personal data, manage access to this data and, potentially, be compensated fairly for such access. This would make data similar to other forms of personal property: a home, a bank account or even a mobile phone number. But before we can imagine such a state, we need to examine three central questions: Why don’t users care enough to take actions that match their concerns? What are the possible solutions? Why is this so difficult?

Why don’t users’ actions match their concerns?

To start, data is intangible. We don’t actively hand it over. As a byproduct of our online activity, it is easy to ignore or forget about. A lot of data harvesting is invisible to the consumer — they see the results in marketing offers, free services, customized feeds, tailored ads, and beyond.

Second, even if users wanted to negotiate more data agency, they have little leverage. Normally, in well-functioning markets, customers can choose from a range of competing providers. But this is not the case if the service is a widely used digital platform. For many, leaving a platform like Facebook feels like it would come at a high cost in terms of time and effort and that they have no other option for an equivalent service with connections to the same people. Plus, many people use their Facebook logins on numerous apps and services. On top of that, Facebook has bought up many of its natural alternatives, like Instagram. It’s equally hard to switch away from other major platforms, like Google or Amazon, without a lot of personal effort.

Third, while a majority of American users believe more regulation is needed, they are not as enthusiastic about broad regulatory solutions being imposed. Instead, they would prefer to have better data management tools at their disposal. However, managing one’s own data would be complex – and that would deter users from embracing such an option….(More)”.

Change of heart: how algorithms could revolutionise organ donations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tej Kohli at TheNewEconomy: “Artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology are both on an exponential growth trajectory, with the potential to improve how we experience our lives and even to extend life itself. But few have considered how these two frontier technologies could be brought together symbiotically to tackle global health and environmental challenges…

For example, combination technologies could tackle a global health issue such as organ donation. According to the World Health Organisation, an average of around 100,800 solid organ transplants were performed each year as of 2008. Yet, in the US, there are nearly 113,000 people waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, while thousands of good organs are discarded each year. For years, those in need of a kidney transplant had limited options: they either had to find a willing and biologically viable living donor, or wait for a viable deceased donor to show up in their local hospital.

But with enough patients and willing donors, big data and AI make it possible to facilitate far more matches than this one-to-one system allows, through a system of paired kidney donation. Patients can now procure a donor who is not a biological fit and still receive a kidney, because AI can match donors to recipients across a massive array of patient-donor relationships. In fact, a single person who steps forward to donate a kidney – to a loved one or even to a stranger – can set off a domino effect that saves dozens of lives by resolving the missing link in a long chain of pairings….

The moral and ethical implications of today’s frontier technologies are far-reaching. Fundamental questions have not been adequately addressed. How will algorithms weigh the needs of poor and wealthy patients? Should a donor organ be sent to a distant patient – potentially one in a different country – with a low rejection risk or to a nearby patient whose rejection risk is only slightly higher?

These are important questions, but I believe we should get combination technologies up and working, and then decide on the appropriate controls. The matching power of AI means that eight lives could be saved by just one deceased organ donor; innovations in biotechnology could ensure that organs are never wasted. The faster these technologies advance, the more lives we can save…(More)”.