Paper by Kirsi Pulkkinen, Timo Aarrevaara, Mikko Rask, and Markku Mattila: “…we investigate the practices and capacities that define successful societal interaction of research groups with stakeholders in mutually beneficial processes. We studied the Finnish Strategic Research Council’s (SRC) first funded projects through a dynamic governance lens. The aim of the paper is to explore how the societal interaction was designed and commenced at the onset of the projects in order to understand the logic through which the consortia expected broad impacts to occur. The Finnish SRC introduced a societal interaction plan (SIP) approach, which requires research consortia to consider societal interaction alongside research activities in a way that exceeds conventional research plans. Hence, the first SRC projects’ SIPs and the implemented activities and working logics discussed in the interviews provide a window into exploring how active societal interaction reflects the call for dynamic, sustainable practices and new capabilities to better link research to societal development. We found that the capacities of dynamic governance were implemented by integrating societal interaction into research, in particular through a ‘drizzling’ approach. In these emerging practices SIP designs function as platforms for the formation of communities of experts, rather than traditional project management models or mere communication tools. The research groups utilized the benefits of pooling academic knowledge and skills with other types of expertise for mutual gain. They embraced the limits of expertise and reached out to societal partners to truly broker knowledge, and exchange and develop capacities and perspectives to solve grand societal challenges…(More)”.
Are We Ready for the Next Pandemic? Navigating the First and Last Mile Challenges in Data Utilization
Blog by Stefaan Verhulst, Daniela Paolotti, Ciro Cattuto and Alessandro Vespignani:
“Public health officials from around the world are gathering this week in Geneva for a weeklong meeting of the 77th World Health Assembly. A key question they are examining is: Are we ready for the next pandemic? As we have written elsewhere, regarding access to and re-use of data, particularly non-traditional data, for pandemic preparedness and response: we are not. Below, we list ten recommendations to advance access to and reuse of non-traditional data for pandemics, drawing on input from a high-level workshop, held in Brussels, within the context of the ESCAPE program…(More)”
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Will we run out of data? Limits of LLM scaling based on human-generated data
Paper by Pablo Villalobos: We investigate the potential constraints on LLM scaling posed by the availability of public human-generated text data. We forecast the growing demand for training data based on current trends and estimate the total stock of public human text data. Our findings indicate that if current LLM development trends continue, models will be trained on datasets roughly equal in size to the available stock of public human text data between 2026 and 2032, or slightly earlier if models are overtrained. We explore how progress in language modeling can continue when human-generated text datasets cannot be scaled any further. We argue that synthetic data generation, transfer learning from data-rich domains, and data efficiency improvements might support further progress…(More)”.
Unmasking and Quantifying Power Structures: How Network Analysis Enhances Peace and State-Building Efforts
Blog by Issa Luna Pla: “Critiques of peace and state-building efforts have pointed out the inadequate grasp of the origins of conflict, political unrest, and the intricate dynamics of criminal and illicit networks (Holt and Bouch, 2009; Cockayne and Lupel, 2011). This limited understanding has failed to sufficiently weaken their economic and political influence or effectively curb their activities and objectives. A recent study highlights that although punitive approaches may have temporarily diminished the power of these networks, the absence of robust analytical tools has made it difficult to assess the enduring impact of these strategies.
1. Application of Network Analytics in State-Building
The importance of analytics in international peace and state-building operations is becoming increasingly recognized (O’Brien, 2010; Gnanguenon, 2021; Rød et al., 2023). Analytics, particularly network analysis, plays a crucial role in dissecting and dismantling complex power structures that often undermine peace initiatives and governance reforms. This analytical approach is crucial for revealing and disrupting the entrenched networks that sustain ongoing conflicts or obstruct peace processes. From the experiences in Guatemala, three significant lessons have been learned regarding the need for analytics for regional and thematic priorities in such operations (Waxenecker, 2019). These insights are vital for understanding how to tailor analytical strategies to address specific challenges in conflict-affected areas.
- The effectiveness of the International Commission CICIG in dismantling criminal networks was constrained by its lack of advanced analytical tools. This limitation prevented a deeper exploration of the conflicts’ roots and hindered the assessment of the long-term impacts of its strategies. While the CICIG had a systematic approach to understanding criminal networks from a contextual and legal perspective, its action plans lacked comprehensive statistic analytics methodologies, leading to missed opportunities in targeting key strategic players within these networks. High-level arrests were based on available evidence and charges that prosecutors could substantiate, rather than a strategic analysis of actors’ roles and influences within the networks’ dynamics.
- Furthermore, the extent of network dismantlement and the lasting effects of imprisonment and financial control of the illicit groups’ assets remain unclear, highlighting the need for predictive analytics to anticipate conflicts and sustainability. Such tools could enable operations to forecast potential disruptions or stability, allowing for data-driven proactive measures to prevent violence or bolster peace.
- Lastly, insights derived from network analysis suggest that efforts should focus on enhancing diplomatic negotiations, promoting economic development and social capital, and balancing punitive measures with strategic interventions. By understanding the dynamics and modeling group behavior in conflict zones, negotiations can be better informed by a deep and holistic comprehension of the underlying power structures and motivations. This approach could also help in forecasting recidivism, assessing risks of network reorganization, and evaluating the potential for increased armament, workforce, or empowerment, thereby facilitating more effective and sustainable peacebuilding initiatives.
2. Advancing Legal and Institutional Reforms
Utilizing data sciences in conflicted environments offers unique insights into the behavior of illicit networks and their interactions within the public and private sectors (Morselli et al., 2007; Leuprecht and Hall, 2014; Campedelli et al., 2019). This systematic approach, grounded in the analysis of years of illicit activities in Guatemala, highlights the necessity of rethinking traditional legal and institutional frameworks…(More)”.
Missions with Impact: A practical guide to formulating effective missions
Guide by the Bertelsmann Stiftung: “The complex challenges associated with sustainability transitions pose major problems for modern political systems and raise the question of whether new ways of negotiation, decision-making and implementation are needed to address these challenges. For example, given the broad-reaching effects of an issue like climate change on diverse aspects of daily life, policy fields and action areas, conventional solutions are unlikely to prove effective.
Mission orientation proves to be a promising approach for addressing cross-cutting thematic challenges. It involves formulating well-defined “missions” intended to direct innovation, economic activities and societal initiatives toward desired outcomes. These missions aim for transformational change, targeting fundamental shifts that extend beyond the usual political timelines to ensure enduring impact. Across several OECD countries and at the EU level, initiatives embracing a mission-oriented approach are gaining momentum. For instance, the EU’s mission of “100 climate-neutral cities” exemplifies this approach by exploring new pathways to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. Here, stakeholders from diverse sectors can get involved to help generate effective solutions targeting the objective of climate neutrality…(More)”.
Making Sense of Wicked Problems
Review by Andrew J. Hoffman: “While reading Oxford University professor Thomas Hale’s Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing Across Time, I kept thinking of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s observation that “we have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life’s continuity on Earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to such responsibility, but here we are.”
Countless scientists have referred to climate change as part of a class of issues called “wicked problems,” a term used to describe issues that do not neatly fit the conventional models of analysis. While we may not be suited to solve the wicked problem of climate change and may despair that we will never be, Hale offers an analysis of how we might better understand and therefore address it.
Hale predicates Long Problems on the general observation that some political issues span not only national borders but also time horizons. His central claim is that climate change is a “long problem,” a challenge that “spans more than one human lifetime.” He acknowledges that while “length is not the only meaningful way to understand climate change, … a focus on this one characteristic can fundamentally reshape our understanding of politics” by challenging us to establish policies on longer time horizons and to account for the future in ways we have not previously done. Reenvisioning policy is important because long problems are becoming more prevalent, he argues, for three reasons: our growing technological ability to bump against limits within the environment, our growing understanding of those distant effects, and our increasing willingness to address the needs of the future in the present.
Long problems, Hale asserts, challenge us to “govern across time,” rather than in the short terms of election cycles and quarterly returns. He warns that such challenges become more difficult to address the longer we ignore long-term governance. Indeed, as long problems become more urgent, we become more immediate and short term in our political orientation. Put differently, when we are drowning, we are less concerned with fixing the cause of the flood than we are with surviving. Hale calls this a paradox that “is another of the various cruel ironies of climate change [because] it threatens precisely the political support for longer term governance functions that can best address it.”…(More)”.
Seeing Like a Data Structure
Essay by Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier: “Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more we employed and mastered technology, the better things got. We don’t live in that world anymore. Not only has technology become entangled with the structure of society, but we also can no longer see the world around us without it. The separation is gone, and the control we thought we once had has revealed itself as a mirage. We’re in a transitional period of history right now.
We tell ourselves stories about technology and society every day. Those stories shape how we use and develop new technologies as well as the new stories and uses that will come with it. They determine who’s in charge, who benefits, who’s to blame, and what it all means.
Some people are excited about the emerging technologies poised to remake society. Others are hoping for us to see this as folly and adopt simpler, less tech-centric ways of living. And many feel that they have little understanding of what is happening and even less say in the matter.
But we never had total control of technology in the first place, nor is there a pretechnological golden age to which we can return. The truth is that our data-centric way of seeing the world isn’t serving us well. We need to tease out a third option. To do so, we first need to understand how we got here…(More)”
Collective Intelligence in Open Policymaking
Book by Rafał Olszowski: “This book examines the nexus of collective intelligence (CI), a feature of online projects in which various types of communities solve problems intelligently, and open policymaking, as a trend of large groups of people shaping public policies.
While doing so, it presents the current state of theoretical knowledge for these concepts, many practical examples of successful and unsuccessful projects, as well as additional research and laboratory experiments. The book develops an analytical framework based on qualitative research, which is applied to the analysis of different projects in selected case studies, such as Decide Madrid; Better Reykjavik; Loomio; Deliberatorium; Civic Budget of the City of Kraków.
The book is structured into four chapters, addressing essential questions in the field: (1) Opening Policymaking; (2) Beyond the Individual: Understanding the Evolution of Collective Intelligence; (3) A Review of the Projects Using Collective Intelligence in Policymaking; (4) Online Public Debate. How Can We Make it More Intelligent?…(More)”.
21st Century technology can boost Africa’s contribution to global biodiversity data
Article by Wiida Fourie-Basson: “In spring in the Southern hemisphere, the natural world is on full throttle: “Flowers are blooming, insects are emerging, birds are singing, and reptiles are coming out of their winter hibernation,” wrote Pete Crowcroft, known as @possumpete on the citizen science app, iNaturalist.
Yet, despite this annual bursting forth of life, a 2023 preprint puts the continent’s contribution to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility at a dismal 2.69%, with huge disparities between African countries…
Since its formation in 2008 as part of a graduate project at the University of California, the iNaturalist platform has evolved into one of the world’s most popular biodiversity observation platforms. Anyone, anywhere in the world, with a smartphone can download the app and start posting images and descriptions of their observations, and a large community of identifiers helps to confirm the species’ observation and label it as “research grade”.
Rebelo says iNaturalist is now used on a massive scale: “During the 2023 City Nature Challenge almost 67,000 people made nearly two million observations over four days – that is, five observations each second. Another 22,000 specialists identified 60 thousand species of animals, plants, and fungi. Few citizen science platforms are as powerful and efficient.”..
Andra Waagmeester, data scientist at Micelio in Belgium and a Wikimentor, believes the dearth of biodiversity data from Africa can be solved by combining the iNaturalist and Wikipedia communities: “They are independent communities, but there is substantial overlap between them. By overlaying the two data sets and leveraging the semantic web, we have the means to deal with the challenge.”
The need for biodiversity-related knowledge from Africa was first acknowledged by the Wiki-community during the 2018 Wikimania conference in Cape Town. The Wiki Biodiversity Project has since grown into an active global community that leverages crowd-sourced knowledge from platforms like iNaturalist…(More)”.
The Future of Peacebuilding: Why Investing in PeaceTech is Essential in Today’s Geopolitics
Article by Artur Kluz and Stefaan Verhulst: “In today’s geopolitical landscape, marked by escalating tensions and technological advancements, there is a significant opportunity for technology to contribute to conflict prevention and peacebuilding: i.e. peacetech. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in his recent speech on Technology and the Transformation of US Foreign Policy, emphasized the crucial role technology plays in geopolitical contests and its potential as an “engine of historic possibility — for our economies, for our democracies, for our people, for our planet.” His assertion that “security, stability, prosperity — they are no longer solely analog matters” underscores the necessity to urgently focus on and invest in technological innovations that can support peacebuilding in the digital age.
Peacetech is an emerging field that describes a range of technologies that can be used for peacebuilding. From satellite internet constellations and early warning systems to AI-driven conflict prediction models, peacetech has the potential to transform the landscape of peacekeeping and conflict prevention. With its diversity of applications, it can support institutions’ peacebuilding or conflict prevention activities by providing insights faster and at scale. It can empower local populations to promote their safety and security and help observers predict future conflict…(More)”.