How to rebuild democracy to truly harness the power of the people

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kyle Ellingson: “Many of us entered this so-called super-election year with a sense of foreboding. So far, not much has happened to allay those fears. Russia’s war on Ukraine is exacerbating a perception that democracy is threatened in Europe and beyond. In the US, Donald Trump, a presidential candidate with self-professed autocratic tendencies, has faced two assassination attempts. And more broadly, people seem to be losing faith in politics. “Most people from a diverse array of countries around the world lack confidence in the performance of their political institutions,” says a 2024 report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

On many objective measures, too, democracy isn’t functioning as it should. The systems we call democracies tend to favour the rich. Political violence is growing, as is legislative gridlock, and worldwide, elections are becoming less free and fair. Some 30 years after commentators crowed about the triumph of Western liberal democracy, their prediction seems further than ever from being realised. What happened?

According to Lex Paulson at the University Mohammed VI Polytechnic in Rabat, Morocco, we have lost sight of what democracy is. “We have made a terrible confusion between the system known as a republic – which relies on elections, parties and a permanent governing class – and the system known as a democracy, in which citizens directly participate in decisions and rotate power.” …(More)”.

The paradox of climate data in West Africa: growing urgency coupled with diminishing accessibility

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cirad: “In 2022, a prolonged drought devastated maize crops in northern Burkina Faso, leaving two million people without sufficient food resources. This dramatic situation could have been better anticipated and its impacts could have been mitigated with the collection and equitable sharing of specific data: that of agrometeorology, the science that studies the effects of meteorological, climatological and hydrological factors on crops.

Although it is too late to prevent the 2022 drought, protecting people from future droughts remains an urgent priority, especially in Africa, a continent where climate change poses a serious threat to rainfed agriculture, its main agricultural and economic activity.

To anticipate these climate risks, it is essential to have access to reliable meteorological data, which is crucial for ensuring sustainable and resilient agricultural practices. Yet in West Africa, the accessibility and reliability of this data are increasingly threatened and face unprecedented diplomatic, economic and security challenges…(More)”.

The satellite spectrum battle that could shape the new space economy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Peggy Hollinger and Yasemin Craggs: “In early August, when corporate activity was in a summer lull, Elon Musk’s SpaceX quietly opened up a new front in a global battle over a scarce and precious resource: radio spectrum.

Its target was an obscure international regulation governing the way spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enables all wireless technology, is shared by satellite operators in different orbits. And the chosen weapon was the US regulator, the Federal Communications Commission. 

On August 9, SpaceX petitioned the FCC to loosen globally agreed power limits on transmissions from operators like itself in low Earth orbit, the region of space up to 2,000km above the planet’s surface set to be a pivotal arena in the future of communication, transportation and defence.

The so-called equivalent power flux density rules were set more than 20 years ago to ensure signals from low Earth orbit did not interfere with those from systems in higher geostationary, or fixed, orbit.

SpaceX, which owns the world’s fastest-growing satellite broadband network, Starlink, told the regulator that these “antiquated power restrictions” were unfit for “the modern space age”. It went on to charge that the international process governing the rules had been hijacked by an alliance between the operators of older, geostationary systems and “America’s staunchest adversaries”. 

At stake was “US global competitiveness in the new space economy” and the future of satellite communication, it said. 

SpaceX’s broadside was the second attempt in less than a year to win a revision of these highly technical rules. Nine months ago at the World Radiocommunication Conference, where regulations governing spectrum use are decided, SpaceX and Project Kuiper — Amazon’s attempt to build a rival to Musk’s system — lost an initial attempt to win global support for a change to the power restrictions. 

Graphic explaining how radio interference can affect satellites

Although many in the industry believe a revision is long overdue, the discussions were tense and divisive, according to participants.

On one side were the upstart tech companies whose low Earth orbit satellite networks are threatening the business models of longer-established competitors with high-speed, low-latency broadband services…(More)”.

AI in Global Development Playbook

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

USAID Playbook: “…When used effectively and responsibly, AI holds the potential to accelerate progress on sustainable development and close digital divides, but it also poses risks that could further impede progress toward these goals. With the right enabling environment and ecosystem of actors, AI can enhance efficiency and accelerate development outcomes in sectors such as health, education, agriculture, energy, manufacturing, and delivering public services. The United States aims to ensure that the benefits of AI are shared equitably across the globe.

Distilled from consultations with hundreds of government officials, non-governmental organizations, technology firms and startups, and individuals from around the world, the AI in Global Development Playbook is a roadmap to develop the capacity, ecosystems, frameworks, partnerships, applications, and institutions to leverage safe, secure, and trustworthy AI for sustainable development.

The United States’ current efforts are grounded in the belief that AI, when developed and deployed responsibly, can be a powerful force for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and addressing some of the world’s most urgent challenges. Looking ahead, the United States will continue to support low- and middle-income countries through funding, advocacy, and convening efforts–collectively navigating the complexities of the digital age and working toward a future in which the benefits of technological development are widely shared.

This Playbook seeks to underscore AI as a uniquely global opportunity with far-reaching impacts and potential risks. It highlights that safe, secure, and trustworthy design, deployment, and use of AI is not only possible but essential. Recognizing that international cooperation and multi-stakeholder partnerships are key in achieving progress, we invite others to contribute their expertise, resources, and perspectives to enrich and expand this framework.

The true measure of progress in responsible AI is not in the sophistication of our machines but in the quality of life the technology enhances. Together we can work toward ensuring the promise of AI is realized in service of this goal…(More)”

Artificial intelligence (AI) in action: A preliminary review of AI use for democracy support

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Policy paper by Grahm Tuohy-Gaydos: “…provides a working definition of AI for Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) and the broader democracy support sector. It then provides a preliminary review of how AI is being used to enhance democratic practices worldwide, focusing on several themes including: accountability and transparency, elections, environmental democracy, inclusion, openness and participation, and women’s political leadership. The paper also highlights potential risks and areas of development in the future. Finally, the paper shares five recommendations for WFD and democracy support organisations to consider advancing their ‘digital democracy’ agenda. This policy paper also offers additional information regarding AI classification and other resources for identifying good practice and innovative solutions. Its findings may be relevant to WFD staff members, international development practitioners, civil society organisations, and persons interested in using emerging technologies within governmental settings…(More)”.

China’s biggest AI model is challenging American dominance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Sam Eifling: “So far, the AI boom has been dominated by U.S. companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta. In recent months, though, a new name has been popping up on benchmarking lists: Alibaba’s Qwen. Over the past few months, variants of Qwen have been topping the leaderboards of sites that measure an AI model’s performance.

“Qwen 72B is the king, and Chinese models are dominating,” Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue wrote in June, after a Qwen-based model first rose to the top of his company’s Open LLM leaderboard.

It’s a surprising turnaround for the Chinese AI industry, which many thought was doomed by semiconductor restrictions and limitations on computing power. Qwen’s success is showing that China can compete with the world’s best AI models — raising serious questions about how long U.S. companies will continue to dominate the field. And by focusing on capabilities like language support, Qwen is breaking new ground on what an AI model can do — and who it can be built for.

Those capabilities have come as a surprise to many developers, even those working on Qwen itself. AI developer David Ng used Qwen to build the model that topped the Open LLM leaderboard. He’s built models using Meta and Google’s technology also but says Alibaba’s gave him the best results. “For some reason, it works best on the Chinese models,” he told Rest of World. “I don’t know why.”..(More)”

Wired Wisdom

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Eszter Hargittai and John Palfrey: “Everyone has that one older relative who loves to post misinformation on social media. That older coworker who fell prey to a phishing attack. Or a parent who still can’t quite get the hang of using emoji in texts. By popular account, these incidents are typical of older generations who inevitably struggle with tech woes. But is that the full story?

Absolutely not, according to the findings of Internet researchers Eszter Hargittai and John Palfrey. Their eye-opening book on the Internet’s fastest-growing demographic offers a more nuanced picture—debunking common myths about older adults’ Internet use to offer hope and a necessary call to action. Incorporating original interviews and survey results from thousands of people sixty and over, Wired Wisdom shows that many, in fact, use technology in ways that put younger peers to shame. Over-sixties are often nimble online, and quicker to abandon social media platforms that don’t meet their needs. Despite being targeted more often, they also may be less likely to fall for scams than younger peers. And fake news actually fools fewer people over sixty, who have far more experience evaluating sources and detecting propaganda. Still, there are unseen risks and missed opportunities for this group. Hargittai and Palfrey show that our stereotypes can be hurdles—keeping us from building intergenerational support communities, aiding loved ones to adopt new technology that may improve their lives, and helping us all thrive.

Full of surprising insights, Wired Wisdom helps push readers beyond ageist assumptions, offers practical advice for older tech users and their communities, and ultimately questions what it really means to age well online—no matter your birthdate…(More)”

Why is it so hard to establish the death toll?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Smriti Mallapaty: “Given the uncertainty of counting fatalities during conflict, researchers use other ways to estimate mortality.

One common method uses household surveys, says Debarati Guha-Sapir, an epidemiologist who specializes in civil conflicts at the University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and is based in Brussels. A sample of the population is asked how many people in their family have died over a specific period of time. This approach has been used to count deaths in conflicts elsewhere, including in Iraq3 and the Central African Republic4.

The situation in Gaza right now is not conducive to a survey, given the level of movement and displacement, say researchers. And it would be irresponsible to send data collectors into an active conflict and put their lives at risk, says Ball.

There are also ethical concerns around intruding on people who lack basic access to food and medication to ask about deaths in their families, says Jamaluddine. Surveys will have to wait for the conflict to end and movement to ease, say researchers.

Another approach is to compare multiple independent lists of fatalities and calculate mortality from the overlap between them. The Human Rights Data Analysis Group used this approach to estimate the number of people killed in Syria between 2011 and 2014. Jamaluddine hopes to use the ministry fatality data in conjunction with those posted on social media by several informal groups to estimate mortality in this way. But Guha-Sapir says this method relies on the population being stable and not moving around, which is often not the case in conflict-affected communities.

In addition to deaths immediately caused by the violence, some civilians die of the spread of infectious diseases, starvation or lack of access to health care. In February, Jamaluddine and her colleagues used modelling to make projections of excess deaths due to the war and found that, in a continued scenario of six months of escalated conflict, 68,650 people could die from traumatic injuries, 2,680 from non-communicable diseases such as cancer and 2,720 from infectious diseases — along with thousands more if an epidemic were to break out. On 30 July, the ministry declared a polio epidemic in Gaza after detecting the virus in sewage samples, and in mid-August it confirmed the first case of polio in 25 years, in a 10-month-old baby…

The longer the conflict continues, the harder it will be to get reliable estimates, because “reports by survivors get worse as time goes by”, says Jon Pedersen, a demographer at !Mikro in Oslo, who advises international agencies on mortality estimates…(More)”.

Second-Order Agency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Cass Sunstein: “Many people prize agency; they want to make their own choices. Many people also prize second-order agency, by which they decide whether and when to exercise first-order agency. First-order agency can be an extraordinary benefit or an immense burden. When it is an extraordinary benefit, people might reject any kind of interference, or might welcome a nudge, or might seek some kind of boost, designed to increase their capacities. When first-order agency is an immense burden, people might also welcome a nudge or might make some kind of delegation (say, to an employer, a doctor, an algorithm, or a regulator). These points suggests that the line between active choosing and paternalism can be illusory. When private or public institutions override people’s desire not to exercise first-order agency, and thus reject people’s exercise of second-order agency, they are behaving paternalistically, through a form of choice-requiring paternalism. Choice-requiring paternalism may compromise second-order agency. It might not be very nice to do that…(More)”.

Visualizing Ship Movements with AIS Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jon Keegan: “As we run, drive, bike, and fly, humans leave behind telltale tracks of movement on Earth—if you know where to look. Physical tracks, thermal signatures, and chemical traces can reveal where we’ve been. But another type of breadcrumb trail comes from the radio signals emitted by the cars, planes, trains, and boats we use.

Just like ADS-B transmitters on airplanes, which provide real-time location, identification, speed, and orientation data, the AIS (Automatic Identification System) performs the same function for ships at sea.

Operating at 161.975 and 162.025 MHz, AIS transmitters broadcast a ship’s identification number, name, call sign, length, beam, type, and antenna location every six minutes. Ship location, position timestamp, and direction are transmitted more frequently. The primary purpose of AIS is maritime safety—it helps prevent collisions, assists in rescues, and provides insight into the impact of ship traffic on marine life.

Unlike ADS-B in a plane, AIS can only be turned off in rare circumstances. The result of this is a treasure trove of fascinating ship movement data. You can even watch live ship data on sites like Vessel Finder.

Using NOAA’s “Marine Cadastre” tool, you can download 16 years’ worth of detailed daily ship movements (filtered to the minute), in addition to “transit count” maps generated from a year’s worth of data to show each ship’s accumulated paths…(More)”.