Advancing Equitable AI in the US Social Sector


Article by Kelly Fitzsimmons: “…when developed thoughtfully and with equity in mind, AI-powered applications have great potential to help drive stronger and more equitable outcomes for nonprofits, particularly in the following three areas.

1. Closing the data gap. A widening data divide between the private and social sectors threatens to reduce the effectiveness of nonprofits that provide critical social services in the United States and leave those they serve without the support they need. As Kriss Deiglmeir wrote in a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review essay, “Data is a form of power. And the sad reality is that power is being held increasingly by the commercial sector and not by organizations seeking to create a more just, sustainable, and prosperous world.” AI can help break this trend by democratizing the process of generating and mobilizing data and evidence, thus making continuous research and development, evaluation, and data analysis more accessible to a wider range of organizations—including those with limited budgets and in-house expertise.

Take Quill.org, a nonprofit that provides students with free tools that help them build reading comprehension, writing, and language skills. Quill.org uses an AI-powered chatbot that asks students to respond to open-ended questions based on a piece of text. It then reviews student responses and offers suggestions for improvement, such as writing with clarity and using evidence to support claims. This technology makes high-quality critical thinking and writing support available to students and schools that might not otherwise have access to them. As Peter Gault, Quill.org’s founder and executive director, recently shared, “There are 27 million low-income students in the United States who struggle with basic writing and find themselves disadvantaged in school and in the workforce. … By using AI to provide students with immediate feedback on their writing, we can help teachers support millions of students on the path to becoming stronger writers, critical thinkers, and active members of our democracy.”..(More)”.

Power and Governance in the Age of AI


Reflections by several experts: “The best way to think about ChatGPT is as the functional equivalent of expensive private education and tutoring. Yes, there is a free version, but there is also a paid subscription that gets you access to the latest breakthroughs and a more powerful version of the model. More money gets you more power and privileged access. As a result, in my courses at Middlebury College this spring, I was obliged to include the following statement in my syllabus:

“Policy on the use of ChatGPT: You may all use the free version however you like and are encouraged to do so. For purposes of equity, use of the subscription version is forbidden and will be considered a violation of the Honor Code. Your professor has both versions and knows the difference. To ensure you are learning as much as possible from the course readings, careful citation will be mandatory in both your informal and formal writing.”

The United States fails to live up to its founding values when it supports a luxury brand-driven approach to educating its future leaders that is accessible to the privileged and a few select lottery winners. One such “winning ticket” student in my class this spring argued that the quality-education-for-all issue was of such importance for the future of freedom that he would trade his individual good fortune at winning an education at Middlebury College for the elimination of ALL elite education in the United States so that quality education could be a right rather than a privilege.

A democracy cannot function if the entire game seems to be rigged and bought by elites. This is true for the United States and for democracies in the making or under challenge around the world. Consequently, in partnership with other liberal democracies, the U.S. government must do whatever it can to render both public and private governance more transparent and accountable. We should not expect authoritarian states to help us uphold liberal democratic values, nor should we expect corporations to do so voluntarily…(More)”.

Limiting Data Broker Sales in the Name of U.S. National Security: Questions on Substance and Messaging


Article by Peter Swire and Samm Sacks: “A new executive order issued today contains multiple provisions, most notably limiting bulk sales of personal data to “countries of concern.” The order has admirable national security goals but quite possibly would be ineffective and may be counterproductive. There are serious questions about both the substance and the messaging of the order. 

The new order combines two attractive targets for policy action. First, in this era of bipartisan concern about China, the new order would regulate transactions specifically with “countries of concern,” notably China, but also others such as Iran and North Korea. A key rationale for the order is to prevent China from amassing sensitive information about Americans, for use in tracking and potentially manipulating military personnel, government officials, or anyone else of interest to the Chinese regime. 

Second, the order targets bulk sales, to countries of concern, of sensitive personal information by data brokers, such as genomic, biometric, and precise geolocation data. The large and growing data broker industry has come under well-deserved bipartisan scrutiny for privacy risks. Congress has held hearings and considered bills to regulate such brokers. California has created a data broker registry and last fall passed the Delete Act to enable individuals to require deletion of their personal data. In January, the Federal Trade Commission issued an order prohibiting data broker Outlogic from sharing or selling sensitive geolocation data, finding that the company had acted without customer consent, in an unfair and deceptive manner. In light of these bipartisan concerns, a new order targeting both China and data brokers has a nearly irresistible political logic.

Accurate assessment of the new order, however, requires an understanding of this order as part of a much bigger departure from the traditional U.S. support for free and open flows of data across borders. Recently, in part for national security reasons, the U.S. has withdrawn its traditional support in the World Trade Organization (WTO) for free and open data flows, and the Department of Commerce has announced a proposed rule, in the name of national security, that would regulate U.S.-based cloud providers when selling to foreign countries, including for purposes of training artificial intelligence (AI) models. We are concerned that these initiatives may not sufficiently account for the national security advantages of the long-standing U.S. position and may have negative effects on the U.S. economy.

Despite the attractiveness of the regulatory targets—data brokers and countries of concern—U.S. policymakers should be cautious as they implement this order and the other current policy changes. As discussed below, there are some possible privacy advances as data brokers have to become more careful in their sales of data, but a better path would be to ensure broader privacy and cybersecurity safeguards to better protect data and critical infrastructure systems from sophisticated cyberattacks from China and elsewhere…(More)”.

Understanding and Measuring Hype Around Emergent Technologies


Article by Swaptik Chowdhury and Timothy Marler: “Inaccurate or excessive hype surrounding emerging technologies can have several negative effects, including poor decisionmaking by both private companies and the U.S. government. The United States needs a comprehensive approach to understanding and assessing public discourse–driven hype surrounding emerging technologies, but current methods for measuring technology hype are insufficient for developing policies to manage it. The authors of this paper describe an approach to analyzing technology hype…(More)”.

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies


Article by Kashmir Hill: “Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.

So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.

LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

According to the report, the trip details had been provided by General Motors — the manufacturer of the Chevy Bolt. LexisNexis analyzed that driving data to create a risk score “for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage,” according to a LexisNexis spokesman, Dean Carney. Eight insurance companies had requested information about Mr. Dahl from LexisNexis over the previous month.

“It felt like a betrayal,” Mr. Dahl said. “They’re taking information that I didn’t realize was going to be shared and screwing with our insurance.”..(More)”.

What Happens to Your Sensitive Data When a Data Broker Goes Bankrupt?


Article by Jon Keegan: “In 2021, a company specializing in collecting and selling location data called Near bragged that it was “The World’s Largest Dataset of People’s Behavior in the Real-World,” with data representing “1.6B people across 44 countries.” Last year the company went public with a valuation of $1 billion (via a SPAC). Seven months later it filed for bankruptcy and has agreed to sell the company.

But for the “1.6B people” that Near said its data represents, the important question is: What happens to Near’s mountain of location data? Any company could gain access to it through purchasing the company’s assets.

The prospect of this data, including Near’s collection of location data from sensitive locations such as abortion clinics, being sold off in bankruptcy has raised alarms in Congress. Last week, Sen. Ron Wyden wrote the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging the agency to “protect consumers and investors from the outrageous conduct” of Near, citing his office’s investigation into the India-based company. 

Wyden’s letter also urged the FTC “to intervene in Near’s bankruptcy proceedings to ensure that all location and device data held by Near about Americans is promptly destroyed and is not sold off, including to another data broker.” The FTC took such an action in 2010 to block the use of 11 years worth of subscriber personal data during the bankruptcy proceedings of the XY Magazine, which was oriented to young gay men. The agency requested that the data be destroyed to prevent its misuse.

Wyden’s investigation was spurred by a May 2023 Wall Street Journal report that Near had licensed location data to the anti-abortion group Veritas Society so it could target ads to visitors of Planned Parenthood clinics and attempt to dissuade women from seeking abortions. Wyden’s investigation revealed that the group’s geofencing campaign focused on 600 Planned Parenthood clinics in 48 states. The Journal also revealed that Near had been selling its location data to the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies...(More)”.

AI doomsayers funded by billionaires ramp up lobbying


Article by Brendan Borderlon: “Two nonprofits funded by tech billionaires are now directly lobbying Washington to protect humanity against the alleged extinction risk posed by artificial intelligence — an escalation critics see as a well-funded smokescreen to head off regulation and competition.

The similarly named Center for AI Policy and Center for AI Safety both registered their first lobbyists in late 2023, raising the profile of a sprawling influence battle that’s so far been fought largely through think tanks and congressional fellowships.

Each nonprofit spent close to $100,000 on lobbying in the last three months of the year. The groups draw money from organizations with close ties to the AI industry like Open Philanthropy, financed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, and Lightspeed Grants, backed by Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.

Their message includes policies like CAIP’s call for legislation that would hold AI developers liable for “severe harms,” require permits to develop “high-risk” systems and empower regulators to “pause AI projects if they identify a clear emergency.”

“[The] risks of AI remain neglected — and are in danger of being outpaced by the rapid rate of AI development,” Nathan Calvin, senior policy counsel at the CAIS Action Fund, said in an email.

Detractors see the whole enterprise as a diversion. By focusing on apocalyptic scenarios, critics claim, these well-funded groups are raising barriers to entry for smaller AI firms and shifting attention away from more immediate and concrete problems with the technology, such as its potential to eliminate jobs or perpetuate discrimination.

Until late last year, organizations working to focus Washington on AI’s existential threat tended to operate under the radar. Instead of direct lobbying, groups like Open Philanthropy funded AI staffers in Congress and poured money into key think tanks. The RAND Corporation, an influential think tank that played a key role in drafting President Joe Biden’s October executive order on AI, received more than $15 million from Open Philanthropy last year…(More)”.

How Mental Health Apps Are Handling Personal Information


Article by Erika Solis: “…Before diving into the privacy policies of mental health apps, it’s necessary to distinguish between “personal information” and “sensitive information,” which are both collected by such apps. Personal information can be defined as information that is “used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity.” Sensitive information, however, can be any data that, if lost, misused, or illegally modified, may negatively affect an individual’s privacy rights. While health information not under HIPAA has previously been treated as general personal information, states like Washington are implementing strong legislation that will cover a wide range of health data as sensitive, and have attendant stricter guidelines.

Legislation addressing the treatment of personal information and sensitive information varies around the world. Regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU, for example, require all types of personal information to be treated as being of equal importance, with certain special categories, including health data having slightly elevated levels of protection. Meanwhile, U.S. federal laws are limited in addressing applicable protections of information provided to a third party, so mental health app companies based in the United States can approach personal information in all sorts of ways. For instance, Mindspa, an app with chatbots that are only intended to be used when a user is experiencing an emergency, and Elomia, a mental health app that’s meant to be used at any time, don’t make distinctions between these contexts in their privacy policies. They also don’t distinguish between the potentially different levels of sensitivity associated with ordinary and crisis use.

Wysa, on the other hand, clearly indicates how it protects personal information. Making a distinction between personal and sensitive data, its privacy policy notes that all health-based information receives additional protection. Similarly, Limbic labels everything as personal information but notes that data, including health, genetic, and biometric, fall within a “special category” that requires more explicit consent than other personal information collected to be used…(More)”.

The U.S. Census Is Wrong on Purpose


Blog by David Friedman: “This is a story about data manipulation. But it begins in a small Nebraska town called Monowi that has only one resident, 90 year old Elsie Eiler.

The sign says “Monowi 1,” from Google Street View.

There used to be more people in Monowi. But little by little, the other residents of Monowi left or died. That’s what happened to Elsie’s own family — her children grew up and moved out and her husband passed away in 2004, leaving her as the sole resident. Now she votes for herself for Mayor, and pays herself taxes. Her husband Rudy’s old book collection became the town library, with Elsie as librarian.

But despite what you might imagine, Elsie is far from lonely. She runs a tavern that’s been in her family for 50 years, and has plenty of regulars from the town next door who come by every day to dine and chat.

I first read about Elsie more than 10 years ago. At the time, it wasn’t as well known a story but Elsie has since gotten a lot of coverage and become a bit of a minor celebrity. Now and then I still come across a new article, including a lovely photo essay in the New York Times and a short video on the BBC Travel site.

A Google search reveals many, many similar articles that all tell more or less the same story.

But then suddenly in 2021, there was a new wrinkle: According to the just-published 2020 U.S. Census data, Monowi now had 2 residents, doubling its population.

This came as a surprise to Elsie, who told a local newspaper, “Then someone’s been hiding from me, and there’s nowhere to live but my house.”

It turns out that nobody new had actually moved to Monowi without Elsie realizing. And the census bureau didn’t make a mistake. They intentionally changed the census data, adding one resident.

Why would they do that? Well, it turns out the census bureau sometimes moves residents around on paper in order to protect people’s privacy.

Full census data is only made available 72 years after the census takes place, in accordance with the creatively-named “72 year rule.” Until then, it is only available as aggregated data with individual identifiers removed. Still, if the population of a town is small enough, and census data for that town indicates, for example, that there is just one 90 year old woman and she lives alone, someone could conceivably figure out who that individual is.

So the census bureau sometimes moves people around to create noise in the data that makes that sort of identification a little bit harder…(More)”.

Air Canada chatbot promised a discount. Now the airline has to pay it


Article by Kyle Melnick: “After his grandmother died in Ontario a few years ago, British Columbia resident Jake Moffatt visited Air Canada’s website to book a flight for the funeral. He received assistance from a chatbot, which told him the airline offered reduced rates for passengers booking last-minute travel due to tragedies.

Moffatt bought a nearly $600 ticket for a next-day flight after the chatbot said he would get some of his money back under the airline’s bereavement policy as long as he applied within 90 days, according to a recent civil-resolutions tribunal decision.

But when Moffatt later attempted to receive the discount, he learned that the chatbot had been wrong. Air Canada only awarded bereavement fees if the request had been submitted before a flight. The airline later argued the chatbot wasa separate legal entity “responsible for its own actions,” the decision said.

Moffatt filed a claim with the Canadian tribunal, which ruled Wednesday that Air Canada owed Moffatt more than $600 in damages and tribunal fees after failing to provide “reasonable care.”

As companies have added artificial intelligence-powered chatbots to their websites in hopes of providing faster service, the Air Canada dispute sheds light on issues associated with the growing technology and how courts could approach questions of accountability. The Canadian tribunal in this case came down on the side of the customer, ruling that Air Canada did not ensure its chatbot was accurate…(More)”