AI-enhanced Collective Intelligence: The State of the Art and Prospects


Paper by Hao Cui and Taha Yasseri: “The current societal challenges exceed the capacity of human individual or collective effort alone. As AI evolves, its role within human collectives is poised to vary from an assistive tool to a participatory member. Humans and AI possess complementary capabilities that, when synergized, can achieve a level of collective intelligence that surpasses the collective capabilities of either humans or AI in isolation. However, the interactions in human-AI systems are inherently complex, involving intricate processes and interdependencies. This review incorporates perspectives from network science to conceptualize a multilayer representation of human-AI collective intelligence, comprising a cognition layer, a physical layer, and an information layer. Within this multilayer network, humans and AI agents exhibit varying characteristics; humans differ in diversity from surface-level to deep-level attributes, while AI agents range in degrees of functionality and anthropomorphism. The interplay among these agents shapes the overall structure and dynamics of the system. We explore how agents’ diversity and interactions influence the system’s collective intelligence. Furthermore, we present an analysis of real-world instances of AI-enhanced collective intelligence. We conclude by addressing the potential challenges in AI-enhanced collective intelligence and offer perspectives on future developments in this field…(More)”.

The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI


Book by Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie: “Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the modern world. It is ubiquitous—in our homes and offices, in the present and most certainly in the future. Today, we encounter AI as our distant ancestors once encountered fire. If we manage AI well, it will become a force for good, lighting the way to many transformative inventions. If we deploy it thoughtlessly, it will advance beyond our control. If we wield it for destruction, it will fan the flames of a new kind of war, one that holds democracy in the balance. As AI policy experts Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie show in The New Fire, few choices are more urgent—or more fascinating—than how we harness this technology and for what purpose.

The new fire has three sparks: data, algorithms, and computing power. These components fuel viral disinformation campaigns, new hacking tools, and military weapons that once seemed like science fiction. To autocrats, AI offers the prospect of centralized control at home and asymmetric advantages in combat. It is easy to assume that democracies, bound by ethical constraints and disjointed in their approach, will be unable to keep up. But such a dystopia is hardly preordained. Combining an incisive understanding of technology with shrewd geopolitical analysis, Buchanan and Imbrie show how AI can work for democracy. With the right approach, technology need not favor tyranny…(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)”.

Breaking the Gridlock


UNDP Human Development Report 2024: “We can do better than this. Better than runaway climate change and pandemics. Better than a spate of unconstitutional transfers of power amid a rising, globalizing tide of populism. Better than cascading human rights violations and unconscionable massacres of people in their homes and civic venues, in hospitals, schools and shelters.

We must do better than a world always on the brink, a socioecological house of cards. We owe it to ourselves, to each other, to our children and their children.

We have so much going for us.

We know what the global challenges are and who will be most affected by them. And we know there will surely be more that we cannot anticipate today.

We know which choices offer better opportunities for peace, shared prosperity and sustainability, better ways to navigate interacting layers of uncertainty and interlinked planetary surprises.

We enjoy unprecedented wealth know-how and technology—unimaginable to our ancestors—that with more equitable distribution and use could power bold and necessary choices for peace and for sustainable, inclusive human development on which peace depends…

In short, why are we so stuck? And how do we get unstuck without resorting myopically to violence or isolationism? These questions motivate the 2023–2024 Human Development Report.

Sharp questions belie their complexity; issues with power disparities at their core often defy easy explanation. Magic bullets entice but mislead—siren songs peddled by sloganeering that exploits group-based grievances. Slick solutions and simple recipes poison our willingness to do the hard work of overcoming polarization.

Geopolitical quagmires abound, driven by shifting power dynamics among states and by national gazes yanked inward by inequalities, insecurity and polarization, all recurring themes in this and recent Human Development Reports. Yet we need not sit on our hands simply because great power competition is heating up while countries underrepresented in global governance seek a greater say in matters of global import. Recall that global cooperation on smallpox eradication and protection of the ozone layer, among other important issues such as nuclear nonproliferation, happened over the course of the Cold War…(More)”.

New Horizons


An Introduction to the 2nd Edition of the State of Open Data by Renata Avila and Tim Davies: “The struggle to deliver on the vision that data, this critical resource of modern societies, should be widely available, well structured, and shared for all to use, has been a long one. It has been a struggle involving thousands upon thousands of individuals, organisations, and communities. Without their efforts, public procurement would be opaque, smart-cities even more corporate controlled, transport systems less integrated, and pandemic responses less rapid. Across numerous initiatives, open data has become more embedded as a way to support accountability, enable collaboration, and to better unlock the value of data. 

However, much like the climber reaching the top of the foothills, and for the first time seeing the hard climb of the whole mountain coming into view, open data advocates, architects, and community builders have not reached the end of their journey. As we move into the middle of the 2020s, action on open data faces new and significant challenges if we are to see a future in which open and enabling data infrastructures and ecosystems are the norm rather than a sparse patchwork of exceptions. Building open infrastructures to power social change for the next century is no small task, and to meet the challenges ahead, we will need all that the lessons we can gather from more than 15 years of open data action to date…Across the collection, we can find two main pathways to broader participation explored. On the one hand are discussions of widening public engagement and data literacy, creating a more diverse constituency of people interested and able to engage with data projects in a voluntary capacity. On the other, are calls for more formalisation of data governance, embedding citizen voices within increasingly structured data collaborations and ensuring that affected stakeholders are consulted on, or given a role in, key data decisions. Mariel García-Montes (Data Literacy) underscores the case for an equity-first approach to the first pathway, highlighting how generalist data literacy can be used for or against the public good, and calling for approaches to data literacy building that centre on an understanding of inequality and power. In writing on urban development, Stefaan G. Verhulst and Sampriti Saxena (Urban Development) point to a number of examples of the latter approach in which cities are experimenting with various forms of deliberative conversations and processes…(More)”.

AI-Powered Urban Innovations Bring Promise, Risk to Future Cities


Article by Anthony Townsend and Hubert Beroche: “Red lights are obsolete. That seems to be the thinking behind Google’s latest fix for cities, which rolled out late last year in a dozen cities around the world, from Seattle to Jakarta. Most cities still collect the data to determine the timing of traffic signals by hand. But Project Green Light replaced clickers and clipboards with mountains of location data culled from smartphones. Artificial intelligence crunched the numbers, adjusting the signal pattern to smooth the flow of traffic. Motorists saw 30% fewer delays. There’s just one catch. Even as pedestrian deaths in the US reached a 40-year high in 2022, Google engineers omitted pedestrians and cyclists from their calculations.

Google’s oversight threatens to undo a decade of progress on safe streets and is a timely reminder of the risks in store when AI invades the city. Mayors across global cities have embraced Vision Zero pledges to eliminate pedestrian deaths. They are trying to slow traffic down, not speed it up. But Project Green Light’s website doesn’t even mention road safety. Still, the search giant’s experiment demonstrates AI’s potential to help cities. Tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions at intersections fell by 10%. Imagine what AI could do if we used it to empower people in cities rather than ignore them.

Take the technocratic task of urban planning and the many barriers to participation it creates. The same technology that powers chatbots and deepfakes is rapidly bringing down those barriers. Real estate developers have mastered the art of using glossy renderings to shape public opinion. But UrbanistAI, a tool developed by Helsinki-based startup SPIN Unit and the Milanese software company Toretei, puts that power in the hands of residents: It uses generative AI to transform text prompts into photorealistic images of alternative designs for controversial projects. Another startup, the Barcelona-based Aino, wraps a chatbot around a mapping tool. Using such computer aids, neighborhood activists no longer need to hire a data scientist to produce maps from census data to make their case…(More)”.

Artificial Intelligence: A Threat to Climate Change, Energy Usage and Disinformation


Press Release: “Today, partners in the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition released a report that maps the risks that artificial intelligence poses to the climate crisis.

Topline points:

  • AI systems require an enormous amount of energy and water, and consumption is expanding quickly. Estimates suggest a doubling in 5-10 years.
  • Generative AI has the potential to turbocharge climate disinformation, including climate change-related deepfakes, ahead of a historic election year where climate policy will be central to the debate. 
  • The current AI policy landscape reveals a concerning lack of regulation on the federal level, with minor progress made at the state level, relying on voluntary, opaque and unenforceable pledges to pause development, or provide safety with its products…(More)”.

The Dark World of Citation Cartels


Article by Domingo Docampo: “In the complex landscape of modern academe, the maxim “publish or perish” has been gradually evolving into a different mantra: “Get cited or your career gets blighted.” Citations are the new academic currency, and careers now firmly depend on this form of scholarly recognition. In fact, citation has become so important that it has driven a novel form of trickery: stealth networks designed to manipulate citations. Researchers, driven by the imperative to secure academic impact, resort to forming citation rings: collaborative circles engineered to artificially boost the visibility of their work. In doing so, they compromise the integrity of academic discourse and undermine the foundation of scholarly pursuit. The story of the modern “citation cartel” is not just a result of publication pressure. The rise of the mega-journal also plays a role, as do predatory journals and institutional efforts to thrive in global academic rankings.

Over the past decade, the landscape of academic research has been significantly altered by the sheer number of scholars engaging in scientific endeavors. The number of scholars contributing to indexed publications in mathematics has doubled, for instance. In response to the heightened demand for space in scientific publications, a new breed of publishing entrepreneur has seized the opportunity, and the result is the rise of mega-journals that publish thousands of articles annually. Mathematics, an open-access journal produced by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, published more than 4,763 articles in 2023, making up 9.3 percent of all publications in the field, according to the Web of Science. It has an impact factor of 2.4 and an article-influence measure of just 0.37, but, crucially, it is indexed with Clarivate’s Web of Science, Elsevier’s Scopus, and other indexers, which means its citations count toward a variety of professional metrics. (By contrast, the Annals of Mathematics, published by Princeton University, contained 22 articles last year, and has an impact factor of 4.9 and an article-influence measure of 8.3.)..(More)”

Once upon a bureaucrat: Exploring the role of stories in government


Article by Thea Snow: “When you think of a profession associated with stories, what comes to mind? Journalist, perhaps? Or author? Maybe, at a stretch, you might think about a filmmaker. But I would hazard a guess that “public servant” would unlikely be one of the first professions that come to mind. However, recent research suggests that we should be thinking more deeply about the connections between stories and government.

Since 2021, the Centre for Public Impact, in partnership with Dusseldorp Forum and Hands Up Mallee, has been exploring the role of storytelling in the context of place-based systems change work. Our first report, Storytelling for Systems Change: Insights from the Field, focused on the way communities use stories to support place-based change. Our second report, Storytelling for Systems Change: Listening to Understand, focused more on how stories are perceived and used by those in government who are funding and supporting community-led systems change initiatives.

To shape these reports, we have spent the past few years speaking to community members, collective impact backbone teams, storytelling experts, academics, public servants, data analysts, and more. Here’s some of what we’ve heard…(More)”.

Evidence for policy-makers: A matter of timing and certainty?


Article by Wouter Lammers et al: “This article investigates how certainty and timing of evidence introduction impact the uptake of evidence by policy-makers in collective deliberations. Little is known about how experts or researchers should time the introduction of uncertain evidence for policy-makers. With a computational model based on the Hegselmann–Krause opinion dynamics model, we simulate how policy-makers update their opinions in light of new evidence. We illustrate the use of our model with two examples in which timing and certainty matter for policy-making: intelligence analysts scouting potential terrorist activity and food safety inspections of chicken meat. Our computations indicate that evidence should come early to convince policy-makers, regardless of how certain it is. Even if the evidence is quite certain, it will not convince all policy-makers. Next to its substantive contribution, the article also showcases the methodological innovation that agent-based models can bring for a better understanding of the science–policy nexus. The model can be endlessly adapted to generate hypotheses and simulate interactions that cannot be empirically tested…(More)”.