Paper by Zhuang Liu, Michael Sockin & Wei Xiong: “This paper develops a foundation for a consumer’s preference for data privacy by linking it to the desire to hide behavioral vulnerabilities. Data sharing with digital platforms enhances the matching efficiency for standard consumption goods, but also exposes individuals with self-control issues to temptation goods. This creates a new form of inequality in the digital era—algorithmic inequality. Although data privacy regulations provide consumers with the option to opt out of data sharing, these regulations cannot fully protect vulnerable consumers because of data-sharing externalities. The coordination problem among consumers may also lead to multiple equilibria with drastically different levels of data sharing by consumers. Our quantitative analysis further illustrates that although data is non-rival and beneficial to social welfare, it can also exacerbate algorithmic inequality…(More)”.
Democracy and the Life of Cities
Report by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs: “In a world facing what some call a “democratic recession,” cities are getting a reputation as a supposed exception. On the geopolitical level, they have stood up against rising authoritarian and populist leadership in North America and Europe. At times, they have skirted around democratic gridlock and polarization at the national level to confront problems such as climate change, coordinating through city-to-city networks.
This role for cities—as global defenders of democracy—has also garnered interest from national governments wary of the rise of China and Russia, including the United States. But what is it about cities that makes them unique democratic actors? Do they, can they, and should they fit the role projected onto them as global democratic bulwarks? What does local urban action really mean for democracy globally?
This essay collection, published with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, approaches these questions with perspectives from leading urbanists, policymakers, academics, and political leaders in North America, Europe, and Africa. The essays consider cities not merely as places in which democratic action took place, but as the “independent variable,” whose unique spatial, social, and political features make it a powerful and creative generator of democratic practices—and, alternatively, a variable which can also make democracy difficult to realize.
If cities live up to their billing as global democratic bulwarks, it likely won’t be at the behest of powerful national governments seeking a geopolitical edge. Instead, they can do so on the basis of the potholes filled, the garbage collected, and the injustices rectified. And, ultimately, by remaking democracy in their image…(More)”.
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
Book by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson” A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear. Progress depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.
The wealth generated by technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages was captured by the nobility and used to build grand cathedrals while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for working people. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence undermine jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates that the path of technology was once—and may again be—brought under control. The tremendous computing advances of the last half century can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders.With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the vision needed to reshape how we innovate and who really gains from technological advances…(More)”.
AI-assisted diplomatic decision-making during crises—Challenges and opportunities
Article by Neeti Pokhriyal and Till Koebe: “Recent academic works have demonstrated the efficacy of employing or integrating “non-traditional” data (e.g., social media, satellite imagery, etc) for situational awareness tasks…
Despite these successes, we identify four critical challenges unique to the area of diplomacy that needs to be considered within the growing AI and diplomacy community going ahead:
1. First, decisions during crises are almost always taken using limited or incomplete information. There may be deliberate misuse and obfuscation of data/signals between different parties involved. At the start of a crisis, information is usually limited and potentially biased, especially along socioeconomic and rural-urban lines as crises are known to exacerbate the vulnerabilities already existing in the populations. This requires AI tools to quantify and visualize calibrated uncertainty in their outputs in an appropriate manner.
2. Second, in many cases, human lives and livelihoods are at stake. Therefore, any forecast, reasoning, or recommendation provided by AI assistance needs to be explainable and transparent for authorized users, but also secure against unauthorized access as diplomatic information is often highly sensitive. The question of accountability in case of misleading AI assistance needs to be addressed beforehand.
3. Third, in complex situations with high stakes but limited information, cultural differences and value-laden judgment driven by personal experiences play a central role in diplomatic decision-making. This calls for the use of learning techniques that can incorporate domain knowledge and experience.
4. Fourth, diplomatic interests during crises are often multifaceted, resulting in deep mistrust in and strategic misuse of information. Social media data, when used for consular tasks, has been shown to be susceptible to various d-/misinformation campaigns, some by the public, others by state actors for strategic manipulation…(More)”
Global Trends in Government Innovation 2023
OECD Report: “In the face of what has increasingly been referred to as an ongoing “permacrisis”, governments must cope with and respond to emerging threats while already grappling with longstanding issues such as climate change, digital disruption and low levels of trust. Despite compounding challenges, governments have been able to adapt and innovate to transform their societies and economies, and to transform themselves and how they design and deliver policies and services. Indeed, recent crises have served to catalyse innovation, and innovation has emerged as a much-needed driver of stability that can generate public value in difficult times.
In this context, understanding new approaches and spreading successful ideas has never been more important. In seeking to do our part to promote this, OPSI and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI) have worked in partnership for nearly seven years to surface leading edge public sector innovation trends and to tell the stories of innovators around the world who are working to challenge existing norms and embed new ways of doing things.
Today, we are excited to jointly launch our report Global Trends in Government Innovation 2023, the preliminary report of which was launched at the World Government Summit (WGS), which brings together over 4 000 participants from more than 190 countries to discuss innovative ways to solve the challenges facing humanity…(More)”.
What do data portals do? Tracing the politics of online devices for making data public
Paper by Jonathan Gray: “The past decade has seen the rise of “data portals” as online devices for making data public. They have been accorded a prominent status in political speeches, policy documents, and official communications as sites of innovation, transparency, accountability, and participation. Drawing on research on data portals around the world, data portal software, and associated infrastructures, this paper explores three approaches for studying the social life of data portals as technopolitical devices: (a) interface analysis, (b) software analysis, and (c) metadata analysis. These three approaches contribute to the study of the social lives of data portals as dynamic, heterogeneous, and contested sites of public sector datafication. They are intended to contribute to critically assessing how participation around public sector datafication is invited and organized with portals, as well as to rethinking and recomposing them…(More)”.
Digital Anthropology Meets Data Science
Article by Katie Hillier: “Analyzing online ecosystems in real time, teams of anthropologists and data scientists can begin to understand rapid social changes as they happen.
Ask not what data science can do for anthropology, but what anthropology can do for data science. —Anders Kristian Munk, Why the World Needs Anthropologists Symposium 2022
In the last decade, emerging technologies, such as AI, immersive realities, and new and more addictive social networks, have permeated almost every aspect of our lives. These innovations are influencing how we form identities and belief systems. Social media influences the rise of subcultures on TikTok, the communications of extremist communities on Telegram, and the rapid spread of conspiracy theories that bounce around various online echo chambers.
People with shared values or experiences can connect and form online cultures at unprecedented scales and speeds. But these new cultures are evolving and shifting faster than our current ability to understand them.
To keep up with the depth and speed of online transformations, digital anthropologists are teaming up with data scientists to develop interdisciplinary methods and tools to bring the deep cultural context of anthropology to scales available only through data science—producing a surge in innovative methodologies for more effectively decoding online cultures in real time…(More)”.
Five Enablers for a New Phase of Behavioral Science
Article by Michael Hallsworth: “Over recent weeks I’ve been sharing parts of a “manifesto” that tries to give a coherent vision for the future of applied behavioral science. Stepping back, if I had to identify a theme that comes through the various proposals, it would be the need for self-reflective practice.
Behavioral science has seen a tremendous amount of growth and interest over the last decade, largely focused on expanding its uses and methods. My sense is it’s ready for a new phase of maturity. That maturity involves behavioral scientists reflecting on the various ways that their actions are shaped by structural, institutional, environmental, economic, and historical factors.
I’m definitely not exempt from this need for self-reflection. There are times when I’ve focused on a cognitive bias when I should have been spending more time exploring the context and motivations for a decision instead. Sometimes I’ve homed in on a narrow slice of a problem that we can measure, even if that means dispensing with wider systemic effects and challenges. Once I spent a long time trying to apply the language of heuristics and biases to explain why people were failing to use the urgent care alternatives to hospital emergency departments, before realizing that their behavior was completely reasonable.
The manifesto critiques things like this, but it doesn’t have all the answers. Because it tries to both cover a lot of ground and go into detail, many of the hard knots of implementation go unpicked. The truth is that writing reports and setting goals is the easy part. Turning those goals into practice is much tougher; as behavioral scientists know, there is often a gap between intention and action.
Right now, I and others don’t always realize the ambitions set out in the manifesto. Changing that is going to take time and effort, and it will involve the discomfort of disrupting familiar practices. Some have made public commitments in this direction; my organization is working on upgrading its practices in line with proposals around making predictions prior to implementation, strengthening RCTs to cope with complexity, and enabling people to use behavioral science, among others.
The truth is that writing reports and setting goals is the easy part. Turning those goals into practice is much tougher; as behavioral scientists know, there is often a gap between intention and action.
But changes by individual actors will not be enough. The big issue is that several of the proposals require coordination. For example, one of the key ideas is the need for more multisite studies that are well coordinated and have clear goals. Another prioritizes developing international professional networks to support projects in low- and middle-income countries…(More)”.
The Rise of Virtual Communities
Book by Amber Atherton: “Uncover the fascinating history of virtual communities and how we connect to each other online. The Rise of Virtual Communities, explores the earliest online community platforms, mapping the technological evolutions, and the individuals, that have shaped the culture of the internet.
Read in-depth interviews with the visionary founders of iconic online platforms, and uncover the history of virtual communities and how the industry has developed over time. Featuring never-before told stories, this exploration introduces new ideas and predictions for the future, explaining how we got here and challenging what we think we may know about building online communities….(More)”.
International Data Governance – Pathways to Progress
Press Release: “In May 2023, the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination endorsed International Data Governance – Pathways to Progress, developed through the High-level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) which approved the paper at its 45th session in March 2023. International Data Governance – Pathways to Progress and its addenda were developed by the HLCP Working Group on International Data Governance…(More)”. (See Annex 1: Mapping and Comparing Data Governance Frameworks).
