Paper by Ankushi Mitra: “Research transparency and data access are considered increasingly important for advancing research credibility, cumulative learning, and discovery. However, debates persist about how to define and achieve these goals across diverse forms of inquiry. This article intervenes in these debates, arguing that the participants and communities with whom scholars work are active stakeholders in science, and thus have a range of rights, interests, and researcher obligations to them in the practice of transparency and openness. Drawing on civically engaged research and related approaches that advocate for subjects of inquiry to more actively shape its process and share in its benefits, I outline a broader vision of research openness not only as a matter of peer scrutiny among scholars or a top-down exercise in compliance, but rather as a space for engaging and maximizing opportunities for all stakeholders in research. Accordingly, this article provides an ethical and practical framework for broadening transparency, accessibility, and data-sharing and benefit-sharing in research. It promotes movement beyond open science to a more inclusive and socially responsive science anchored in a larger ethical commitment: that the pursuit of knowledge be accountable and its benefits made accessible to the citizens and communities who make it possible…(More)”.
Artificial Intelligence and Big Data
Book edited by Frans L. Leeuw and Michael Bamberger: “…explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data contribute to the evaluation of the rule of law (covering legal arrangements, empirical legal research, law and technology, and international law), and social and economic development programs in both industrialized and developing countries. Issues of ethics and bias in the use of AI are also addressed and indicators of the growth of knowledge in the field are discussed.
Interdisciplinary and international in scope, and bringing together leading academics and practitioners from across the globe, the book explores the applications of AI and big data in Rule of Law and development evaluation, identifies differences in the approaches used in the two fields, and how each could learn from the approaches used in the other, as well as differences in the AI-related issues addressed in industrialized nations compared to those addressed in Africa and Asia.
Artificial Intelligence and Big Data is an essential read for researchers, academics and students working in the fields of Rule of Law and Development, and researchers in institutions working on new applications in AI will all benefit from the book’s practical insights…(More)”.
Spaces for Deliberation
Report by Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen & James MacDonald-Nelson: “As citizens’ assemblies and other forms of citizen deliberation are increasingly implemented in many parts of the world, it is becoming more relevant to explore and question the role of the physical spaces in which these processes take place.
This paper builds on existing literature that considers the relationships between space and democracy. In the literature, this relationship has been studied with a focus on the architecture of parliament buildings, and on the role of urban public spaces and architecture for political culture, both largely within the context of representative democracy and with little or no attention given to spaces for facilitated citizen deliberation. With very limited considerations of the spaces for deliberative assemblies in the literature, in this paper, we argue that the spatial qualities for citizen deliberation demand more critical attention.
Through a series of interviews with leading practitioners of citizens’ assemblies from six different countries, we explore what spatial qualities are typically considered in the planning and implementation of these assemblies, what are the recurring challenges related to the physical spaces where they take place, and the opportunities and limitations for a more intentional spatial design. In this paper, we synthesise our findings and formulate a series of considerations for the spatial qualities of citizens’ assemblies aimed at informing future practice and further research…(More)”.
AI models could help negotiators secure peace deals
The Economist: “In a messy age of grinding wars and multiplying tariffs, negotiators are as busy as the stakes are high. Alliances are shifting and political leaders are adjusting—if not reversing—positions. The resulting tumult is giving even seasoned negotiators trouble keeping up with their superiors back home. Artificial-intelligence (AI) models may be able to lend a hand.
Some such models are already under development. One of the most advanced projects, dubbed Strategic Headwinds, aims to help Western diplomats in talks on Ukraine. Work began during the Biden administration in America, with officials on the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) offering guidance to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think-tank in Washington that runs the project. With peace talks under way, CSIS has speeded up its effort. Other outfits are doing similar work.
The CSIS programme is led by a unit called the Futures Lab. This team developed an AI language model using software from Scale AI, a firm based in San Francisco, and unique training data. The lab designed a tabletop strategy game called “Hetman’s Shadow” in which Russia, Ukraine and their allies hammer out deals. Data from 45 experts who played the game were fed into the model. So were media analyses of issues at stake in the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as answers provided by specialists to a questionnaire about the relative values of potential negotiation trade-offs. A database of 374 peace agreements and ceasefires was also poured in.
Thus was born, in late February, the first iteration of the Ukraine-Russia Peace Agreement Simulator. Users enter preferences for outcomes grouped under four rubrics: territory and sovereignty; security arrangements; justice and accountability; and economic conditions. The AI model then cranks out a draft agreement. The software also scores, on a scale of one to ten, the likelihood that each of its components would be satisfactory, negotiable or unacceptable to Russia, Ukraine, America and Europe. The model was provided to government negotiators from those last three territories, but a limited “dashboard” version of the software can be run online by interested members of the public…(More)”.
To Understand Global Migration, You Have to See It First
Data visualization by The New York Times: “In the maps below, Times Opinion can provide the clearest picture to date of how people move across the globe: a record of permanent migration to and from 181 countries based on a single, consistent source of information, for every month from the beginning of 2019 through the end of 2022. These estimates are drawn not from government records but from the location data of three billion anonymized Facebook users all over the world.
The analysis — the result of new research published on Wednesday from Meta, the University of Hong Kong and Harvard University — reveals migration’s true global sweep. And yes, it excludes business travelers and tourists: Only people who remain in their destination country for more than a year are counted as migrants here.
The data comes with some limitations. Migration to and from certain countries that have banned or restricted the use of Facebook, including China, Iran and Cuba, is not included in this data set, and it’s impossible to know each migrant’s legal status. Nevertheless, this is the first time that estimates of global migration flows have been made publicly available at this scale. The researchers found that from 2019 to 2022, an annual average of 30 million people — approximately one-third of a percent of the world’s population — migrated each year.
If you would like to see the data behind this analysis for yourself, we made an interactive tool that you can use to explore the full data set…(More)”
Inside arXiv—the Most Transformative Platform in All of Science
Article by Sheon Han: “Nearly 35 years ago, Ginsparg created arXiv, a digital repository where researchers could share their latest findings—before those findings had been systematically reviewed or verified. Visit arXiv.org today (it’s pronounced like “archive”) and you’ll still see its old-school Web 1.0 design, featuring a red banner and the seal of Cornell University, the platform’s institutional home. But arXiv’s unassuming facade belies the tectonic reconfiguration it set off in the scientific community. If arXiv were to stop functioning, scientists from every corner of the planet would suffer an immediate and profound disruption. “Everybody in math and physics uses it,” Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. “I scan it every night.”
Every industry has certain problems universally acknowledged as broken: insurance in health care, licensing in music, standardized testing in education, tipping in the restaurant business. In academia, it’s publishing. Academic publishing is dominated by for-profit giants like Elsevier and Springer. Calling their practice a form of thuggery isn’t so much an insult as an economic observation. Imagine if a book publisher demanded that authors write books for free and, instead of employing in-house editors, relied on other authors to edit those books, also for free. And not only that: The final product was then sold at prohibitively expensive prices to ordinary readers, and institutions were forced to pay exorbitant fees for access…(More)”.
Data Cooperatives: Democratic Models for Ethical Data Stewardship
Paper by Francisco Mendonca, Giovanna DiMarzo, and Nabil Abdennadher: “Data cooperatives offer a new model for fair data governance, enabling individuals to collectively control, manage, and benefit from their information while adhering to cooperative principles such as democratic member control, economic participation, and community concern. This paper reviews data cooperatives, distinguishing them from models like data trusts, data commons, and data unions, and defines them based on member ownership, democratic governance, and data sovereignty. It explores applications in sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and construction. Despite their potential, data cooperatives face challenges in coordination, scalability, and member engagement, requiring innovative governance strategies, robust technical systems, and mechanisms to align member interests with cooperative goals. The paper concludes by advocating for data cooperatives as a sustainable, democratic, and ethical model for the future data economy…(More)”.
Behavioral AI: Unleash Decision Making with Data
Book by Rogayeh Tabrizi: “…delivers an intuitive roadmap to help organizations disentangle the complexity of their data to create tangible and lasting value. The book explains how to balance the multiple disciplines that power AI and behavioral economics using a combination of the right questions and insightful problem solving.
You’ll learn why intellectual diversity and combining subject matter experts in psychology, behavior, economics, physics, computer science, and engineering is essential to creating advanced AI solutions. You’ll also discover:
- How behavioral economics principles influence data models and governance architectures and make digital transformation processes more efficient and effective
- Discussions of the most important barriers to value in typical big data and AI projects and how to bring them down
- The most effective methodology to help shorten the long, wasteful process of “boiling the ocean of data”
An exciting and essential resource for managers, executives, board members, and other business leaders engaged or interested in harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and big data, Behavioral AI will also benefit data and machine learning professionals…(More)”
Working With Cracks
An excerpt from Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems by Adam Kahane: “Systems are structured to keep producing the behaviors and results they are producing, and therefore often seem solid and unchangeable—but they are not. They are built, and they collapse. They crack and are cracked, which opens up new possibilities that some people find frightening and others find hopeful. Radical engagement involves looking for, moving toward, and working with these cracks—not ignoring or shying away from them. We do this by seeking out and working with openings, alongside others who are doing the same…
Al Etmanski has pioneered the transformation of the living conditions of Canadians with disabilities, away from segregation, dependency, and second-class status toward connection, agency, and justice. I have spoken with him and studied what he and others have written about his decades of experience, and especially about how his strategy and approach have evolved and enabled him to make the contributions he has. He has advanced through repeatedly searching out and working with openings or cracks (breakdowns and bright spots) in the social-economic-political-institutional-cultural “disability system.”..(More)”.
Energy and AI
Report by the International Energy Agency (IEA): “The development and uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) has accelerated in recent years – elevating the question of what widespread deployment of the technology will mean for the energy sector. There is no AI without energy – specifically electricity for data centres. At the same time, AI could transform how the energy industry operates if it is adopted at scale. However, until now, policy makers and other stakeholders have often lacked the tools to analyse both sides of this issue due to a lack of comprehensive data.
This report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) aims to fill this gap based on new global and regional modelling and datasets, as well as extensive consultation with governments and regulators, the tech sector, the energy industry and international experts. It includes projections for how much electricity AI could consume over the next decade, as well as which energy sources are set to help meet it. It also analyses what the uptake of AI could mean for energy security, emissions, innovation and affordability…(More)”.