Law, AI, and Human Rights

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by John Croker: “Technology has been at the heart of two injustices that courts have labelled significant miscarriages of justice. The first example will be familiar now to many people in the UK: colloquially known as the ‘post office’ or ‘horizon’ scandal. The second is from Australia, where the Commonwealth Government sought to utilise AI to identify overpayment in the welfare system through what is colloquially known as the ‘Robodebt System’. The first example resulted in the most widespread miscarriage of justice in the UK legal system’s history. The second example was labelled “a shameful chapter” in government administration in Australia and led to the government unlawfully asserting debts amounting to $1.763 billion against 433,000 Australians, and is now the subject of a Royal Commission seeking to identify how public policy failures could have been made on such a significant scale.

Both examples show that where technology and AI goes wrong, the scale of the injustice can result in unprecedented impacts across societies….(More)”.

When Concerned People Produce Environmental Information: A Need to Re-Think Existing Legal Frameworks and Governance Models?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Anna Berti Suman, Mara Balestrini, Muki Haklay, and Sven Schade: “When faced with an environmental problem, locals are often among the first to act. Citizen science is increasingly one of the forms of participation in which people take action to help solve environmental problems that concern them. This implies, for example, using methods and instruments with scientific validity to collect and analyse data and evidence to understand the problem and its causes. Can the contribution of environmental data by citizens be articulated as a right? In this article, we explore these forms of productive engagement with a local matter of concern, focussing on their potential to challenge traditional allocations of responsibilities. Taking mostly the perspective of the European legal context, we identify an existing gap between the right to obtain environmental information, granted at present by the Aarhus Convention, and “a right to contribute information” and have that information considered by appointed institutions. We also explore what would be required to effectively practise this right in terms of legal and governance processes, capacities, and infrastructures, and we propose a flexible framework to implement it. Situated at the intersection of legal and governance studies, this article builds on existing literature on environmental citizen science, and on its interplay with law and governance. Our methodological approach combines literature review with legal analysis of the relevant conventions and national rules. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our analysis, and on the benefits of this legal innovation, potentially fostering data altruism and an active citizenship, and shielding ordinary people against possible legal risks…(More)”.

China’s fake science industry: how ‘paper mills’ threaten progress

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Eleanor Olcott, Clive Cookson and Alan Smith at the Financial Times: “…Over the past two decades, Chinese researchers have become some of the world’s most prolific publishers of scientific papers. The Institute for Scientific Information, a US-based research analysis organisation, calculated that China produced 3.7mn papers in 2021 — 23 per cent of global output — and just behind the 4.4mn total from the US.

At the same time, China has been climbing the ranks of the number of times a paper is cited by other authors, a metric used to judge output quality. Last year, China surpassed the US for the first time in the number of most cited papers, according to Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, although that figure was flattered by multiple references to Chinese research that first sequenced the Covid-19 virus genome.

The soaring output has sparked concern in western capitals. Chinese advances in high-profile fields such as quantum technology, genomics and space science, as well as Beijing’s surprise hypersonic missile test two years ago, have amplified the view that China is marching towards its goal of achieving global hegemony in science and technology.

That concern is a part of a wider breakdown of trust in some quarters between western institutions and Chinese ones, with some universities introducing background checks on Chinese academics amid fears of intellectual property theft.

But experts say that China’s impressive output masks systemic inefficiencies and an underbelly of low-quality and fraudulent research. Academics complain about the crushing pressure to publish to gain prized positions at research universities…(More)”.

What We Gain from More Behavioral Science in the Global South

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Pauline Kabitsis and Lydia Trupe: “In recent years, the field has been critiqued for applying behavioral science at the margins, settling for small but statistically significant effect sizes. Critics have argued that by focusing our efforts on nudging individuals to increase their 401(k) contributions or to reduce their so-called carbon footprint, we have ignored the systemic drivers of important challenges, such as fundamental flaws in the financial system and corporate responsibility for climate change. As Michael Hallsworth points out, however, the field may not be willfully ignoring these deeper challenges, but rather investing in areas of change that are likely easier to move, measure, and secure funding.

It’s been our experience working in the Global South that nudge-based solutions can provide short-term gains within current systems, but for lasting impact a focus beyond individual-level change is required. This is because the challenges in the Global South typically navigate fundamental problems, like enabling women’s reproductive choice, combatting intimate partner violence and improving food security among the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Our work at Common Thread focuses on improving behaviors related to health, like encouraging those persistently left behind to get vaccinated, and enabling Ukrainian refugees in Poland to access health and welfare services. We use a behavioral model that considers not just the individual biases that impact people’s behaviors, but the structural, social, interpersonal, and even historical context that triggers these biases and inhibits health seeking behaviors…(More)”.

China Data Flows and Power in the Era of Chinese Big Tech

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by W. Gregory Voss and Emmanuel Pernot-Leplay: “Personal data have great economic interest today and their possession and control are the object of geopolitics, leading to their regulation by means that vary dependent on the strategic objectives of the jurisdiction considered. This study fills a gap in the literature in this area by analyzing holistically the regulation of personal data flows both into and from China, the world’s second largest economy. In doing so, it focuses on laws and regulations of three major power blocs: the United States, the European Union, and China, seen within the framework of geopolitics, and considering the rise of Chinese big tech.

First, this study analyzes ways that the United States—the champion of the free-flow of data that has helped feed the success of the Silicon Valley system—has in specific cases prevented data flows to China on grounds of individual data protection and national security. The danger of this approach and alternate protection through potential U.S. federal data privacy legislation are evoked. Second, the cross-border data flow restriction of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is studied in the context of data exports to China, including where the data transit via the United States prior to their transfer to China. Next, after review of the conditions for a European Commission adequacy determination and an examination of recent data privacy legislation in China, the authors provide a preliminary negative assessment of the potential for such a determination for China, where government access is an important part of the picture. Difficult points are highlighted for investigation by data exporters to China, when relying on EU transfer mechanisms, following the Schrems II jurisprudence.

Finally, recent Chinese regulations establishing requirements for the export of data are studied. In this exercise, light is shed on compliance requirements for companies under Chinese law, provisions of Chinese data transfer regulations that are similar to the those of the GDPR, and aspects that show China’s own approach to restrictions on data transfers, such as an emphasis on national security protection. This study concludes with the observation that restrictions for data flows both into and out of China will continue and potentially be amplified, and economic actors will need to prepare themselves to navigate the relevant regulations examined in this study….(More)”.

The pandemic veneer: COVID-19 research as a mobilisation of collective intelligence by the global research community

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Daniel W Hook and James R Wilsdon: “The global research community responded with speed and at scale to the emergence of COVID-19, with around 4.6% of all research outputs in 2020 related to the pandemic. That share almost doubled through 2021, to reach 8.6% of research outputs. This reflects a dramatic mobilisation of global collective intelligence in the face of a crisis. It also raises fundamental questions about the funding, organisation and operation of research. In this Perspective article, we present data that suggests that COVID-19 research reflects the characteristics of the underlying networks from which it emerged, and on which it built. The infrastructures on which COVID-19 research has relied – including highly skilled, flexible research capacity and collaborative networks – predated the pandemic, and are the product of sustained, long-term investment. As such, we argue that COVID-19 research should not be viewed as a distinct field, or one-off response to a specific crisis, but as a ‘pandemic veneer’ layered on top of longstanding interdisciplinary networks, capabilities and structures. These infrastructures of collective intelligence need to be better understood, valued and sustained as crucial elements of future pandemic or crisis response…(More)”.

Mini Data Centers heat local swimming pools for free

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “It is now well-understood that data centres consume vast amounts of energy. This is because the banks of servers in the data centres require a lot of cooling, which, in turn, uses a lot of energy. But one data centre has found a use for all the heat that it generates, a use that could also help public facilities such as swimming pools save money on their energy costs.

Deep Green, which runs data centres, has developed small edge data centres that can be installed locally and divert some of their excess heat to warm leisure centres and public swimming pools. The system, dubbed a “digital boiler”, involves immersing central processing unit (CPU) servers in special cooling tubs, which use oil to remove heat from the servers. This oil is then passed through a heat exchanger, which removes the heat and uses it to warm buildings or swimming pools.

Photo source Deep Green

The company says the heat donation from one of its digital boilers will cut a public swimming pool’s gas requirements by around 70 per cent, saving leisure centres thousands of pounds every year while also drastically reducing carbon emissions. Deep Green pays for the electricity it uses and donates the heat for free. This is a huge benefit, as Britain’s public swimming pools are facing massive increases in heating bills, which is causing many to close or restrict their hours…(More)”.

The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Randall Patnode: “…traces the history of the synchronous broadcast experience of the twentieth century and the transition to the asynchronous media that dominate today. Broadcasting grew out of the latent desire by nineteenth-century industrialists, political thinkers, and social reformers to tame an unruly society by controlling how people used their time. The idea manifested itself in the form of the broadcast schedule, a managed flow of information and entertainment that required audiences to be in a particular place – usually the home – at a particular time and helped to create “water cooler” moments, as audiences reflected on their shared media texts. Audiences began disconnecting from the broadcast schedule at the end of the twentieth century, but promoters of social media and television services still kept audiences under control, replacing the schedule with surveillance of media use. Author Randall Patnode offers compelling new insights into the intermingled roles of broadcasting and industrial/post-industrial work and how Americans spend their time…(More)”.

Building Trust in AI: A Landscape Analysis of Government AI Programs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Susan Ariel Aaronson: “As countries around the world expand their use of artificial intelligence (AI), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has developed the most comprehensive website on AI policy, the OECD.AI Policy Observatory. Although the website covers public policies on AI, the author of this paper found that many governments failed to evaluate or report on their AI initiatives. This lack of reporting is a missed opportunity for policy makers to learn from their programs (the author found that less than one percent of the programs listed on the OECD.AI website had been evaluated). In addition, the author found discrepancies between what governments said they were doing on the OECD.AI website and what they reported on their own websites. In some cases, there was no evidence of government actions; in other cases, links to government sites did not work. Evaluations of AI policies are important because they help governments demonstrate how they are building trust in both AI and AI governance and that policy makers are accountable to their fellow citizens…(More)”.

To harness telecom data for good, there are six challenges to overcome

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Anat Lewin and Sveta Milusheva: “The global use of mobile phones generates a vast amount of data. What good can be done with these data? During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw that aggregated data from mobile phones can tell us where groups of humans are going, how many of them are there, and how they are behaving as a cluster. When used effectively and responsibly, mobile phone data can be immensely helpful for development work and emergency response — particularly in resource-constrained countries.  For example, an African country that had, in recent years, experienced a cholera outbreak was ahead of the game. Since the legal and practical agreements were already in place to safely share aggregated mobile data, accessing newer information to support epidemiological modeling for COVID-19 was a straightforward exercise. The resulting datasets were used to produce insightful analyses that could better inform health, lockdown, and preventive policy measures in the country.

To better understand such challenges and opportunities, we led an effort to access and use anonymized, aggregated mobile phone data across 41 countries. During this process, we identified several recurring roadblocks and replicable successes, which we summarized in a paper along with our lessons learned. …(More)”.