Local Systems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Position Paper by USAID: “…describes the key approaches USAID will use to translate systems thinking into systems practice. It focuses on ways USAID can better understand and engage local systems to support them in producing more sustainable results. Systems thinking is a mindset and set of tools that we use to understand how systems behave and produce certain results or outcomes. Systems practice is the application of systems thinking to better understand challenges and strengthen the capacity of local systems to unlock locally led, sustained progress. The shift from systems thinking to systems practice is driven by a desire to integrate systems practice throughout the Program Cycle and increase our capacity to actively and adaptively manage programming in ways that recognize complexity and help make our programs more effective and sustainable.

These approaches will be utilized alongside and within the context of USAID’s policies and guidance, including technical guidance for specific sectors, as well as evidence and lessons learned from partners around the world. Systems thinking is a long-standing discipline that can serve as a powerful tool for understanding and working with local systems. It has been a consistent component of USAID’s decades-long commitment to locally led development and humanitarian assistance. USAID uses systems thinking to better understand the complex and interrelated challenges we confront – from climate change to migration to governance – and the perspectives of diverse stakeholders on these issues. When we understand challenges as complex systems – where outcomes emerge from the interactions and relationships between actors and elements in that system – we can leverage and help strengthen the local capacities and relationships that will ultimately drive sustainable progress…(More)”.

Trust in artificial intelligence makes Trump/Vance a transhumanist ticket

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Filip Bialy: “AI plays a central role in the 2024 US presidential election, as a tool for disinformation and as a key policy issue. But its significance extends beyond these, connecting to an emerging ideology known as TESCREAL, which envisages AI as a catalyst for unprecedented progress, including space colonisation. After this election, TESCREALism may well have more than one representative in the White House, writes Filip Bialy

In June 2024, the essay Situational Awareness by former OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner sparked intense debate in the AI community. The author predicted that by 2027, AI would surpass human intelligence. Such claims are common among AI researchers. They often assert that only a small elite – mainly those working at companies like OpenAI – possesses inside knowledge of the technology. Many in this group hold a quasi-religious belief in the imminent arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) or artificial superintelligence (ASI)…

These hopes and fears, however, are not only religious-like but also ideological. A decade ago, Silicon Valley leaders were still associated with the so-called Californian ideology, a blend of hippie counterculture and entrepreneurial yuppie values. Today, figures like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman are under the influence of a new ideological cocktail: TESCREAL. Coined in 2023 by Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, TESCREAL stands for Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism.

While these may sound like obscure terms, they represent ideas developed over decades, with roots in eugenics. Early 20th-century eugenicists such as Francis Galton promoted selective breeding to enhance future generations. Later, with advances in genetic engineering, the focus shifted from eugenics’ racist origins to its potential to eliminate genetic defects. TESCREAL represents a third wave of eugenics. It aims to digitise human consciousness and then propagate digital humans into the universe…(More)”

The Emerging Age of AI Diplomacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Sam Winter-Levy: “In a vast conference room, below chandeliers and flashing lights, dozens of dancers waved fluorescent bars in an intricately choreographed routine. Green Matrix code rained down in the background on a screen that displayed skyscrapers soaring from a desert landscape. The world was witnessing the emergence of “a sublime and transcendent entity,” a narrator declared: artificial intelligence. As if to highlight AI’s transformative potential, a digital avatar—Artificial Superintelligence One—approached a young boy and together they began to sing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The audience applauded enthusiastically. With that, the final day dawned on what one government minister in attendance described as the “world’s largest AI thought leadership event.”

This surreal display took place not in Palo Alto or Menlo Park but in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the third edition of the city’s Global AI Summit, in September of this year. In a cavernous exhibition center next to the Ritz Carlton, where Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman imprisoned hundreds of wealthy Saudis on charges of corruption in 2017,robots poured tea and mixed drinks. Officials in ankle-length white robes hailed Saudi Arabia’s progress on AI. American and Chinese technology companies pitched their products and announced memorandums of understanding with the government. Attendantsdistributed stickers that declared, “Data is the new oil.”

For Saudi Arabia and its neighbor, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), AI plays an increasingly central role in their attempts to transform their oil wealth into new economic models before the world transitions away from fossil fuels. For American AI companies, hungry for capital and energy, the two Gulf states and their sovereign wealth funds are tantalizing partners. And some policymakers in Washington see a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promise access to American computing power in a bid to lure the Gulf states away from China and deepen an anti-Iranian coalition in the Middle East….The two Gulf states’ interest in AI is not new, but it has intensified in recent months. Saudi Arabia plans to create a $40 billion fund to invest in AI and has set up Silicon Valley–inspired startup accelerators to entice coders to Riyadh. In 2019, the UAE launched the world’s first university dedicated to AI, and since 2021, the number of AI workers in the country has quadrupled, according to government figures. The UAE has also released a series of open-source large language models that it claims rival those of Google and Meta, and earlier this year it launched an investment firm focused on AI and semiconductors that could surpass $100 billion in assets under management…(More)”.

What’s the Value of Privacy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brief by New America: “On a day-to-day basis, people make decisions about what information to share and what information to keep to themselves—guided by an inner privacy compass. Privacy is a concept that is both evocative and broad, often possessing different meanings for different people. The term eludes a common, static definition, though it is now inextricably linked to technology and a growing sense that individuals do not have control over their personal information. If privacy still, at its core, encompasses “the right to be left alone,” then that right is increasingly difficult to exercise in the modern era. 

The inability to meaningfully choose privacy is not an accident—in fact, it’s often by design. Society runs on data. Whether it is data about people’s personal attributes, preferences, or actions, all that data can be linked together, becoming greater than the sum of its parts. If data is now the world’s most valuable resource, then the companies that are making record profits off that data are highly incentivized to keep accessing it and obfuscating the externalities of data sharing. In brief, data use and privacy are “economically significant.” 

And yet, despite the pervasive nature of data collection, much of the public lacks a nuanced understanding of the true costs and benefits of sharing their data—for themselves and for society as a whole. People who have made billions by collecting and re-selling individual user data will continue to claim that it has little value. And yet, there are legitimate reasons why data should be shared—without a clear understanding of an issue, it is impossible to address it…(More)”.

Open government data and self-efficacy: The empirical evidence of micro foundation via survey experiments

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Kuang-Ting Tai, Pallavi Awasthi, and Ivan P. Lee: “Research on the potential impacts of government openness and open government data is not new. However, empirical evidence regarding the micro-level impact, which can validate macro-level theories, has been particularly limited. Grounded in social cognitive theory, this study contributes to the literature by empirically examining how the dissemination of government information in an open data format can influence individuals’ perceptions of self-efficacy, a key predictor of public participation. Based on two rounds of online survey experiments conducted in the U.S., the findings reveal that exposure to open government data is associated with decreased perceived self-efficacy, resulting in lower confidence in participating in public affairs. This result, while contrary to optimistic assumptions, aligns with some other empirical studies and highlights the need to reconsider the format for disseminating government information. The policy implications suggest further calibration of open data applications to target professional and skilled individuals. This study underscores the importance of experiment replication and theory development as key components of future research agendas…(More)”.

The New Artificial Intelligentsia

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Ruha Benjamin: “In the Fall of 2016, I gave a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton titled “Are Robots Racist?” Headlines such as “Can Computers Be Racist? The Human-Like Bias of Algorithms,” “Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem,” and “Is an Algorithm Any Less Racist Than a Human?” had captured my attention in the months before. What better venue to discuss the growing concerns about emerging technologies, I thought, than an institution established during the early rise of fascism in Europe, which once housed intellectual giants like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, and prides itself on “protecting and promoting independent inquiry.”

My initial remarks focused on how emerging technologies reflect and reproduce social inequities, using specific examples of what some termed “algorithmic discrimination” and “machine bias.” A lively discussion ensued. The most memorable exchange was with a mathematician who politely acknowledged the importance of the issues I raised but then assured me that “as AI advances, it will eventually show us how to address these problems.” Struck by his earnest faith in technology as a force for good, I wanted to sputter, “But what about those already being harmed by the deployment of experimental AI in healthcare, education, criminal justice, and more—are they expected to wait for a mythical future where sentient systems act as sage stewards of humanity?”

Fast-forward almost 10 years, and we are living in the imagination of AI evangelists racing to build artificial general intelligence (AGI), even as they warn of its potential to destroy us. This gospel of love and fear insists on “aligning” AI with human values to rein in these digital deities. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, echoed the sentiment of my IAS colleague: “We are improving our AI systems’ ability to learn from human feedback and to assist humans at evaluating AI. Our goal is to build a sufficiently aligned AI system that can help us solve all other alignment problems.” They envision a time when, eventually, “our AI systems can take over more and more of our alignment work and ultimately conceive, implement, study, and develop better alignment techniques than we have now. They will work together with humans to ensure that their own successors are more aligned with humans.” For many, this is not reassuring…(More)”.

How elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Blake Ellis, et al: “The 80-year-old communications engineer from Texas had saved for decades, driving around in an old car and buying clothes from thrift stores so he’d have enough money to enjoy his retirement years.

But as dementia robbed him of his reasoning abilities, he began making online political donations over and over again — eventually telling his son he believed he was part of a network of political operatives communicating with key Republican leaders. In less than two years, the man became one of the country’s largest grassroots supporters of the Republican Party, ultimately giving away nearly half a million dollars to former President Donald Trump and other candidates. Now, the savings account he spent his whole life building is practically empty.

The story of this unlikely political benefactor is one of many playing out across the country.

More than 1,000 reports filed with government agencies and consumer advocacy groups reviewed by CNN, along with an analysis of campaign finance data and interviews with dozens of contributors and their family members, show how deceptive political fundraisers have victimized hundreds of elderly Americans and misled those battling dementia or other cognitive impairments into giving away millions of dollars — far more than they ever intended. Some unintentionally joined the ranks of the top grassroots political donors in the country as they tapped into retirement savings and went into debt, contributing six-figure sums through thousands of transactions…(More)”.

Long-term validation of inner-urban mobility metrics derived from Twitter/X

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Steffen Knoblauch et al: “Urban mobility analysis using Twitter as a proxy has gained significant attention in various application fields; however, long-term validation studies are scarce. This paper addresses this gap by assessing the reliability of Twitter data for modeling inner-urban mobility dynamics over a 27-month period in the. metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The evaluation involves the validation of Twitter-derived mobility estimates at both temporal and spatial scales, employing over 1.6 × 1011 mobile phone records of around three million users during the non-stationary mobility period from April 2020 to. June 2022, which coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. The results highlight the need for caution when using Twitter for short-term modeling of urban mobility flows. Short-term inference can be influenced by Twitter policy changes and the availability of publicly accessible tweets. On the other hand, this long-term study demonstrates that employing multiple mobility metrics simultaneously, analyzing dynamic and static mobility changes concurrently, and employing robust preprocessing techniques such as rolling window downsampling can enhance the inference capabilities of Twitter data. These novel insights gained from a long-term perspective are vital, as Twitter – rebranded to X in 2023 – is extensively used by researchers worldwide to infer human movement patterns. Since conclusions drawn from studies using Twitter could be used to inform public policy, emergency response, and urban planning, evaluating the reliability of this data is of utmost importance…(More)”.

City Tech

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Rob Walker: “The world is rapidly urbanizing, and experts predict that up to 80 percent of the population will live in cities by 2050. To accommodate that growth while ensuring quality of life for all residents, cities are increasingly turning to technology. From apps that make it easier for citizens to pitch in on civic improvement projects to comprehensive plans for smarter streets and neighborhoods, new tools and approaches are taking root across the United States and around the world. In this thoughtful, inquisitive collection, Rob Walker—former New York Times columnist and author of the City Tech column for Land Lines magazine—investigates the new technologies afoot and their implications for planners, policymakers, residents, and the virtual and literal landscapes of the cities we call home…(More)”

AI helped Uncle Sam catch $1 billion of fraud in one year. And it’s just getting started

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Matt Egan: “The federal government’s bet on using artificial intelligence to fight financial crime appears to be paying off.

Machine learning AI helped the US Treasury Department to sift through massive amounts of data and recover $1 billion worth of check fraud in fiscal 2024 alone, according to new estimates shared first with CNN. That’s nearly triple what the Treasury recovered in the prior fiscal year.

“It’s really been transformative,” Renata Miskell, a top Treasury official, told CNN in a phone interview.

“Leveraging data has upped our game in fraud detection and prevention,” Miskell said.

The Treasury Department credited AI with helping officials prevent and recover more than $4 billion worth of fraud overall in fiscal 2024, a six-fold spike from the year before.

US officials quietly started using AI to detect financial crime in late 2022, taking a page out of what many banks and credit card companies already do to stop bad guys.

The goal is to protect taxpayer money against fraud, which spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic as the federal government scrambled to disburse emergency aid to consumers and businesses.

To be sure, Treasury is not using generative AI, the kind that has captivated users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini by generating images, crafting song lyrics and answering complex questions (even though it still sometimes struggles with simple queries)…(More)”.