Work and meaning in the age of AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Daniel Susskind: “It is often said that work is not only a source of income but also of meaning. In this paper, I explore the theoretical and empirical literature that addresses this relationship between work and meaning. I show that the relationship is far less clear than is commonly supposed: There is a great heterogeneity in its nature, both among today’s workers and workers over time. I explain why this relationship matters for policymakers and economists concerned about the impact of technology on work. In the short term, it is important for predicting labour market outcomes of interest. It also matters for understanding how artificial intelligence (AI) affects not only the quantity of work but its quality as well: These new technologies may erode the meaning that people get from their work. In the medium term, if jobs are lost, this relationship also matters for designing bold policy interventions like the ‘Universal Basic Income’ and ‘Job Guarantee Schemes’: Their design, and any choice between them, is heavily dependent on policymakers’—often tacit—assumptions about the nature of this underlying relationship between work and meaning. For instance, policymakers must decide whether to simply focus on replacing lost income alone (as with a Universal Basic Income) or, if they believe that work is an important and non-substitutable source of meaning, on protecting jobs for that additional role as well (as with a Job Guarantee Scheme). In closing, I explore the challenge that the age of AI presents for an important feature of liberal political theory: the idea of ‘neutrality.’..(More)”

Prophets at a Tangent: How Art Shapes Social Imagination

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Book by Geoff Mulgan: “This Element asks if the arts can help us imagine a better future society and economy, without deep social gulfs or ecological harm. It argues that at their best, the arts open up new ways of seeing and thinking. They can warn and prompt and connect us to a bigger sense of what we could be. But artists have lost their role as gods and prophets, partly as an effect of digital technologies and the ubiquity of artistic production, and partly as an effect of shifting values. Few recent books, films, artworks or exhibitions have helped us imagine how our world could solve its problems or how it might be better a generation or more from now. This Element argues that artists work best not as prophets of a new society but rather as ‘prophets at a tangent’….(More)”.

Computational Social Science for the Public Good: Towards a Taxonomy of Governance and Policy Challenges

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Chapter by Stefaan G. Verhulst: “Computational Social Science (CSS) has grown exponentially as the process of datafication and computation has increased. This expansion, however, is yet to translate into effective actions to strengthen public good in the form of policy insights and interventions. This chapter presents 20 limiting factors in how data is accessed and analysed in the field of CSS. The challenges are grouped into the following six categories based on their area of direct impact: Data Ecosystem, Data Governance, Research Design, Computational Structures and Processes, the Scientific Ecosystem, and Societal Impact. Through this chapter, we seek to construct a taxonomy of CSS governance and policy challenges. By first identifying the problems, we can then move to effectively address them through research, funding, and governance agendas that drive stronger outcomes…(More)”. Full Book: Handbook of Computational Social Science for Policy

Automating Immigration and Asylum: The Uses of New Technologies in Migration and Asylum Governance in Europe

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Report by Derya Ozkul: “The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act proposal categorises AI uses for immigration, asylum and border as high risk, but new technologies are already used in many aspects of migration and asylum ‘management’ beyond imagination. To be able to reflect on the AI Act proposal, we first need to understand what current uses are, but this information is not always publicly available.

The new report by the Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (AFAR) project shows the multitude of uses of new technologies across Europe at the national and the EU levels. In particular, the report explores in detail the use of forecasting tools, risk assessment and triaging systems, processing of short- and long-term residency and citizenship applications, document verification, speech and dialect recognition, distribution of welfare benefits, matching tools, mobile phone data extraction and electronic monitoring, across Europe. It highlights the need for transparency and thorough training of decision-makers, as well as the inclusion of migrants’ interests in the design, decision, and implementation stages…(More)”.

The Smartness Mandate

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Book by Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell: “Smart phones. Smart cars. Smart homes. Smart cities. The imperative to make our world ever smarter in the face of increasingly complex challenges raises several questions: What is this “smartness mandate”? How has it emerged, and what does it say about our evolving way of understanding—and managing—reality? How have we come to see the planet and its denizens first and foremost as data-collecting instruments?

In The Smartness Mandate, Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell radically suggest that “smartness” is not primarily a technology, but rather an epistemology. Through this lens, they offer a critical exploration of the practices, technologies, and subjects that such an understanding relies upon—above all, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The authors approach these not simply as techniques for solving problems of calculations, but rather as modes of managing life (human and other) in terms of neo-Darwinian evolution, distributed intelligences, and “resilience,” all of which have serious implications for society, politics, and the environment.

The smartness mandate constitutes a new form of planetary governance, and Halpern and Mitchell aim to map the logic of this seemingly inexorable and now naturalized demand to compute, illuminate the genealogy of how we arrived here, and point to alternative imaginaries of the possibilities and potentials of smart technologies and infrastructures…(More)”.

Who owns the map? Data sovereignty and government spatial data collection, use, and dissemination

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Peter A. Johnson and Teresa Scassa: “Maps, created through the collection, assembly, and analysis of spatial data are used to support government planning and decision-making. Traditionally, spatial data used to create maps are collected, controlled, and disseminated by government, although over time, this role has shifted. This shift has been driven by the availability of alternate sources of data collected by private sector companies, and data contributed by volunteers to open mapping platforms, such as OpenStreetMap. In theorizing this shift, we provide examples of how governments use data sovereignty as a tool to shape spatial data collection, use, and sharing. We frame four models of how governments may navigate shifting spatial data sovereignty regimes; first, with government retaining complete control over data collection; second, with government contracting a third party to provide specific data collection services, but with data ownership and dissemination responsibilities resting with government; third, with government purchasing data under terms of access set by third party data collectors, who disseminate data to several parties, and finally, with government retreating from or relinquishing data sovereignty altogether. Within this rapidly changing landscape of data providers, we propose that governments must consider how to address data sovereignty concerns to retain their ability to control data use in the public interest…(More)”.

Why Europe must embrace participatory policymaking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Alberto Alemanno, Claire Davenport, and Laura Batalla: “Today, Europe faces many threats – from economic uncertainty and war on its eastern borders to the rise of illiberal democracies and popular reactionary politicians.

As Europe recovers from the pandemic and grapples with economic and social unrest, it is at an inflection point; it can either create new spaces to build trust and a sense of shared purpose between citizens and governments, or it can continue to let its democratic institutions erode and distrust grow. 

The scale of such problems requires novel problem-solving and new perspectives, including those from civil society and citizens. Increased opportunities for citizens to engage with policymakers can lend legitimacy and accountability to traditionally ‘opaque’ policymaking processes. The future of the bloc hinges on its ability to not only sustain democratic institutions but to do so with buy-in from constituents.

Yet policymaking in the EU is often understood as a technocratic process that the public finds difficult, if not impossible, to navigate. The Spring 2022 Eurobarometer found that just 53% of respondents believed their voice counts in the EU. The issue is compounded by a lack of political literacy coupled with a dearth of channels for participation or co-creation. 

In parallel, there is a strong desire from citizens to make their voices heard. A January 2022 Special Eurobarometer on the Future of Europe found that 90% of respondents agreed that EU citizens’ voices should be taken more into account during decision-making. The Russian war in Ukraine has strengthened public support for the EU as a whole. According to the Spring 2022 Eurobarometer, 65% of Europeans view EU membership as a good thing. 

This is not to say that the EU has no existing models for citizen engagement. The European Citizens Initiative – a mechanism for petitioning the Commission to propose new laws – is one example of existing infrastructure. There is also an opportunity to build on the success of The Conference on the Future of Europe, a gathering held this past spring that gave citizens the opportunity to contribute policy recommendations and justifications alongside traditional EU policymakers…(More)”

The Autocrat in Your iPhone

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Ronald J. Deibert: “In the summer of 2020, a Rwandan plot to capture exiled opposition leader Paul Rusesabagina drew international headlines. Rusesabagina is best known as the human rights defender and U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient who sheltered more than 1,200 Hutus and Tutsis in a hotel during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. But in the decades after the genocide, he also became a prominent U.S.-based critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. In August 2020, during a layover in Dubai, Rusesabagina was lured under false pretenses into boarding a plane bound for Kigali, the Rwandan capital, where government authorities immediately arrested him for his affiliation with an opposition group. The following year, a Rwandan court sentenced him to 25 years in prison, drawing the condemnation of international human rights groups, the European Parliament, and the U.S. Congress. 

Less noted at the time, however, was that this brazen cross-border operation may also have employed highly sophisticated digital surveillance. After Rusesabagina’s sentencing, Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a digital security research group I founded and direct, discovered that smartphones belonging to several of Rusesabagina’s family members who also lived abroad had been hacked by an advanced spyware program called Pegasus. Produced by the Israel-based NSO Group, Pegasus gives an operator near-total access to a target’s personal data. Forensic analysis revealed that the phone belonging to Rusesabagina’s daughter Carine Kanimba had been infected by the spyware around the time her father was kidnapped and again when she was trying to secure his release and was meeting with high-level officials in Europe and the U.S. State Department, including the U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs. NSO Group does not publicly identify its government clients and the Rwandan government has denied using Pegasus, but strong circumstantial evidence points to the Kagame regime.

In fact, the incident is only one of dozens of cases in which Pegasus or other similar spyware technology has been found on the digital devices of prominent political opposition figures, journalists, and human rights activists in many countries. Providing the ability to clandestinely infiltrate even the most up-to-date smartphones—the latest “zero click” version of the spyware can penetrate a device without any action by the user—Pegasus has become the digital surveillance tool of choice for repressive regimes around the world. It has been used against government critics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and pro-democracy protesters in Thailand. It has been deployed by Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia and Viktor Orban’s Hungary…(More)”.

Recentring the demos in the measurement of democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Seema Shah: “Rethinking how we measure and evaluate democratic performance is vital to reversing a longstanding negative trend in global democracy. We must confront the past, including democracy’s counter-intuitively intrinsic inequality. This is key to revitalising institutions in a way that allows democratic practice to live up to its potential…

In the global democracy assessment space, teams like the one I lead at International IDEA compete to provide the most rigorous, far-reaching and understandable set of democracy measurements in the world. Alexander Hudson explains how critical these indicators are, providing important benchmarks for democratic growth and decline to policymakers, governments, international organisations, and journalists.

Yet in so many ways, the core of what these datasets measure and help assess are largely the same. This redundancy is no doubt at least partially a product of wealthy donors’ prioritisation of liberal democracy as an ideal. It is compounded by how the measures are calculated. As Adam Przeworksi recently stated, reliance on expert coders runs the risk of measuring little other than those experts’ biases.

But if that is the case, and quantitative measurements continue to be necessary for democracy assessment, shouldn’t we rethink exactly what we are measuring and how we are measuring it?..

Democracy assessment indices do not typically measure ordinary people’s evaluations of the state of democracy. Instead, other specialised ‘barometers’ often take on this task. See, for example, Afrobarometer, Eurobarometer, Asian Barometer, and Latinobarometro. Surveys of public perceptions on a range of issues also exist, including, but not limited to democracy. The problem is, however, that these do not systematically make it into overall democracy assessments or onto policymakers’ desks. This means that policymakers and others do not consistently prioritise or consider lived experiences as they make decisions about democracy and human rights-related funding and interventions…(More)”.

Here’s how the agricultural sector can solve its data problem

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Satyanarayana Jeedigunta and Arushi Goel: “Food and nutrition security, skewed distribution of farmer incomes, natural disasters and climate change are severely impacting the sustainability of agricultural systems across the globe. Policy reforms are needed to correct these distortions, but innovative emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, distributed ledger technologies, sensors and drones, can make a significant difference.

Emerging technologies need data, and it must be the right data, for the right purpose at the right time. This is how it can deliver maximum impact. Agricultural value chains comprise a complex system of stakeholders and activities. The enormity of the size and complexity of agricultural data, coupled with its fragmented nature, pose significant challenges to unlocking its potential economic value, estimated at $65 billion in India alone….

As such, there is a need to promote standards-based interoperability, which enables multiple digital systems to exchange agricultural data in an automated manner with limited human intervention. The ease and speed of such an exchange of data, across domains and technologies, would spur the development of innovative solutions and lead to evidence-driven, prediction-based decision-making on the farm and in the market.

Most agricultural data is dynamic

Most current efforts to develop standards of agriculture data are isolated and localized. The AGROVOC initiative of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization addresses a part of the data problem by creating an exhaustive vocabulary of agricultural terms. There is also a need to develop an open data format for the automated interchange of agriculture data. A coordinated initiative of the industry is an attractive approach to develop such a format…(More)”.