Paper by Dino Pedreschi et al: “Human-AI coevolution, defined as a process in which humans and AI algorithms continuously influence each other, increasingly characterises our society, but is understudied in artificial intelligence and complexity science literature. Recommender systems and assistants play a prominent role in human-AI coevolution, as they permeate many facets of daily life and influence human choices through online platforms. The interaction between users and AI results in a potentially endless feedback loop, wherein users’ choices generate data to train AI models, which, in turn, shape subsequent user preferences. This human-AI feedback loop has peculiar characteristics compared to traditional human-machine interaction and gives rise to complex and often “unintended” systemic outcomes. This paper introduces human-AI coevolution as the cornerstone for a new field of study at the intersection between AI and complexity science focused on the theoretical, empirical, and mathematical investigation of the human-AI feedback loop. In doing so, we: (i) outline the pros and cons of existing methodologies and highlight shortcomings and potential ways for capturing feedback loop mechanisms; (ii) propose a reflection at the intersection between complexity science, AI and society; (iii) provide real-world examples for different human-AI ecosystems; and (iv) illustrate challenges to the creation of such a field of study, conceptualising them at increasing levels of abstraction, i.e., scientific, legal and socio-political…(More)”.
What is ‘sovereign AI’ and why is the concept so appealing (and fraught)?
Article by John Letzing: “Denmark unveiled its own artificial intelligence supercomputer last month, funded by the proceeds of wildly popular Danish weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. It’s now one of several sovereign AI initiatives underway, which one CEO believes can “codify” a country’s culture, history, and collective intelligence – and become “the bedrock of modern economies.”
That particular CEO, Jensen Huang, happens to run a company selling the sort of chips needed to pursue sovereign AI – that is, to construct a domestic vintage of the technology, informed by troves of homegrown data and powered by the computing infrastructure necessary to turn that data into a strategic reserve of intellect…
It’s not surprising that countries are forging expansive plans to put their own stamp on AI. But big-ticket supercomputers and other costly resources aren’t feasible everywhere.
Training a large language model has gotten a lot more expensive lately; the funds required for the necessary hardware, energy, and staff may soon top $1 billion. Meanwhile, geopolitical friction over access to the advanced chips necessary for powerful AI systems could further warp the global playing field.
Even for countries with abundant resources and access, there are “sovereignty traps” to consider. Governments pushing ahead on sovereign AI could risk undermining global cooperation meant to ensure the technology is put to use in transparent and equitable ways. That might make it a lot less safe for everyone.
An example: a place using AI systems trained on a local set of values for its security may readily flag behaviour out of sync with those values as a threat…(More)”.
Engaging publics in science: a practical typology
Paper by Heather Douglas et al: “Public engagement with science has become a prominent area of research and effort for democratizing science. In the fall of 2020, we held an online conference, Public Engagement with Science: Defining and Measuring Success, to address questions of how to do public engagement well. The conference was organized around conceptualizations of the publics engaged, with attendant epistemic, ethical, and political valences. We present here the typology of publics we used (volunteer, representative sample, stakeholder, and community publics), discuss the differences among those publics and what those differences mean for practice, and situate this typology within the existing work on public engagement with science. We then provide an overview of the essays published in this journal arising from the conference which provides a window into the rich work presented at the event…(More)”.
Access, Signal, Action: Data Stewardship Lessons from Valencia’s Floods
Article by Marta Poblet, Stefaan Verhulst, and Anna Colom: “Valencia has a rich history in water management, a legacy shaped by both triumphs and tragedies. This connection to water is embedded in the city’s identity, yet modern floods test its resilience in new ways.
During the recent floods, Valencians experienced a troubling paradox. In today’s connected world, digital information flows through traditional and social media, weather apps, and government alert systems designed to warn us of danger and guide rapid responses. Despite this abundance of data, a tragedy unfolded last month in Valencia. This raises a crucial question: how can we ensure access to the right data, filter it for critical signals, and transform those signals into timely, effective action?
Data stewardship becomes essential in this process.
In particular, the devastating floods in Valencia underscore the importance of:
- having access to data to strengthen the signal (first mile challenges)
- separating signal from noise
- translating signal into action (last mile challenges)…(More)”.
Ignorance: A Global History
Book by Peter Burke: “Throughout history, every age has thought of itself as more knowledgeable than the last. Renaissance humanists viewed the Middle Ages as an era of darkness, Enlightenment thinkers tried to sweep superstition away with reason, the modern welfare state sought to slay the “giant” of ignorance, and in today’s hyperconnected world seemingly limitless information is available on demand. But what about the knowledge lost over the centuries? Are we really any less ignorant than our ancestors?
In this highly original account, Peter Burke examines the long history of humanity’s ignorance across religion and science, war and politics, business and catastrophes. Burke reveals remarkable stories of the many forms of ignorance—genuine or feigned, conscious and unconscious—from the willful politicians who redrew Europe’s borders in 1919 to the politics of whistleblowing and climate change denial. The result is a lively exploration of human knowledge across the ages, and the importance of recognizing its limits…(More)”.
Operational Learning
International Red Cross: “Operational learning in emergencies is the lesson learned from managing and dealing with crises, refining protocols for resource allocation, decision-making, communication strategies, and others. The summaries are generated using AI and Large Language Models, based on data coming from Final DREF Reports, Emergency Appeal reports and others…(More)”
Democracy Theatre & Performance
Book by David Wiles: “Democracy… is actually a form of theatre. In making his case, the author deftly investigates orators at the foundational moments of ancient and modern democracy, demonstrating how their performative skills were used to try to create a better world. People often complain about demagogues, or wish that politicians might be more sincere. But to do good, politicians (paradoxically) must be hypocrites – or actors. Moving from Athens to Indian independence via three great revolutions – in Puritan England, republican France and liberal America – the book opens up larger questions about the nature of democracy. When in the classical past Plato condemned rhetoric, the only alternative he could offer was authoritarianism. Wiles’ bold historical study has profound implications for our present: calls for personal authenticity, he suggests, are not an effective way to counter the rise of populism…(More)”
‘We were just trying to get it to work’: The failure that started the internet
Article by Scott Nover: “At the height of the Cold War, Charley Kline and Bill Duvall were two bright-eyed engineers on the front lines of one of technology’s most ambitious experiments. Kline, a 21-year-old graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Duvall, a 29-year-old systems programmer at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), were working on a system called Arpanet, short for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Funded by the US Department of Defense, the project aimed to create a network that could directly share data without relying on telephone lines. Instead, this system used a method of data delivery called “packet switching” that would later form the basis for the modern internet.
It was the first test of a technology that would change almost every facet of human life. But before it could work, you had to log in.
Kline sat at his keyboard between the lime-green walls of UCLA’s Boelter Hall Room 3420, prepared to connect with Duvall, who was working a computer halfway across the state of California. But Kline didn’t even make it all the way through the word “L-O-G-I-N” before Duvall told him over the phone that his system crashed. Thanks to that error, the first “message” that Kline sent Duvall on that autumn day in 1969 was simply the letters “L-O”…(More)”.
Beached Plastic Debris Index; a modern index for detecting plastics on beaches
Paper by Jenna Guffogg et al: “Plastic pollution on shorelines poses a significant threat to coastal ecosystems, underscoring the urgent need for scalable detection methods to facilitate debris removal. In this study, the Beached Plastic Debris Index (BPDI) was developed to detect plastic accumulation on beaches using shortwave infrared spectral features. To validate the BPDI, plastic targets with varying sub-pixel covers were placed on a sand spit and captured using WorldView-3 satellite imagery. The performance of the BPDI was analysed in comparison with the Normalized Difference Plastic Index (NDPI), the Plastic Index (PI), and two hydrocarbon indices (HI, HC). The BPDI successfully detected the plastic targets from sand, water, and vegetation, outperforming the other indices and identifying pixels with <30 % plastic cover. The robustness of the BPDI suggests its potential as an effective tool for mapping plastic debris accumulations along coastlines…(More)”.
More-than-human governance experiments in Europe
Paper by Claudia Chwalisz & Lucy Reid: “There is a growing network of people and places exploring and practising how governance and policy design can draw on more-than-human intelligences.
‘More-than-human’ was initially coined by David Abram in his 1997 book The Spell of the Sensuous. The term refers to the animate earth and the impossibility of separating our human- ness from our relationship with it. Our exploration related to governance has been around how we might meaningfully consider our relationship with the living world when taking decisions.
We have undertaken a short exploratory research project to learn who is conducting new governance experiments in Europe to begin to map the field, learn from best practices, and share these findings…
There were three main types of approaches to applying the idea of more-than-human governance in practice, sometimes with an overlap:
- Rights-based;
- Representation-focused, and
- Artistic.
We identified four key groups we felt were missing from our initial research and discussions:
- Indigenous voices;
- More non-specialists and artists;
- A few critical voices, and
- People using technology in novel ways that reshape our relationship with the living world…(More)”