How Data Can Map and Make Racial Inequality More Visible (If Done Responsibly)

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Reflection Document by The GovLab: “Racism is a systemic issue that pervades every aspect of life in the United States and around the world. In recent months, its corrosive influence has been made starkly visible, especially on Black people. Many people are hurting. Their rage and suffering stem from centuries of exclusion and from being subject to repeated bias and violence. Across the country, there have been protests decrying racial injustice. Activists have called upon the government to condemn bigotry and racism, to act against injustice, to address systemic and growing inequality.

Institutions need to take meaningful action to address such demands. Though racism is not experienced in the same way by all communities of color, policymakers must respond to the anxieties and apprehensions of Black people as well as those of communities of color more generally. This work will require institutions and individuals to reflect on how they may be complicit in perpetuating structural and systematic inequalities and harm and to ask better questions about the inequities that exist in society (laid bare in both recent acts of violence and in racial disadvantages in health outcomes during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis). This work is necessary but unlikely to be easy. As Rashida Richardson, Director of Policy Research at the AI Now Institute at NYU notes:

“Social and political stratifications also persist and worsen because they are embedded into our social and legal systems and structures. Thus, it is difficult for most people to see and understand how bias and inequalities have been automated or operationalized over time.”

We believe progress can be made, at least in part, through responsible data access and analysis, including increased availability of (disaggregated) data through data collaboration. Of course, data is only one part of the overall picture, and we make no claims that data alone can solve such deeply entrenched problems. Nonetheless, data can have an impact by making inequalities resulting from racism more quantifiable and inaction less excusable.

…Prioritizing any of these topics will also require increased community engagement and participatory agenda setting. Likewise, we are deeply conscious that data can have a negative as well as positive impact and that technology can perpetuate racism when designed and implemented without the input and participation of minority communities and organizations. While our report here focuses on the promise of data, we need to remain aware of the potential to weaponize data against vulnerable and already disenfranchised communities. In addition, (hidden) biases in data collected and used in AI algorithms, as well as in a host of other areas across the data life cycle, will only exacerbate racial inequalities if not addressed….(More)”

ALSO: The piece is supplemented by a crowdsourced listing of Data-Driven Efforts to Address Racial Inequality.

The Long Shadow Of The Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Steven Weber and Nils Gilman at Noema: “We’re living through a real-time natural experiment on a global scale. The differential performance of countries, cities and regions in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic is a live test of the effectiveness, capacity and legitimacy of governments, leaders and social contracts.

The progression of the initial outbreak in different countries followed three main patterns. Countries like Singapore and Taiwan represented Pattern A, where (despite many connections to the original source of the outbreak in China) vigilant government action effectively cut off community transmission, keeping total cases and deaths low. China and South Korea represented Pattern B: an initial uncontrolled outbreak followed by draconian government interventions that succeeded in getting at least the first wave of the outbreak under control.

Pattern C is represented by countries like Italy and Iran, where waiting too long to lock down populations led to a short-term exponential growth of new cases that overwhelmed the healthcare system and resulted in a large number of deaths. In the United States, the lack of effective and universally applied social isolation mechanisms, as well as a fragmented healthcare system and a significant delay in rolling out mass virus testing, led to a replication of Pattern C, at least in densely populated places like New York City and Chicago.“Regime type isn’t correlated with outcomes.”

Despite the Chinese and Americans blaming each other and crediting their own political system for successful responses, the course of the virus didn’t score easy political points on either side of the new Cold War. Regime type isn’t correlated with outcomes. Authoritarian and democratic countries are included in each of the three patterns of responses: authoritarian China and democratic South Korea had effective responses to a dramatic breakout; authoritarian Singapore and democratic Taiwan both managed to quarantine and contain the virus; authoritarian Iran and democratic Italy both experienced catastrophe.

It’s generally a mistake to make long-term forecasts in the midst of a hurricane, but some outlines of lasting shifts are emerging. First, a government or society’s capacity for technical competence in executing plans matters more than ideology or structure. The most effective arrangements for dealing with the pandemic have been found in countries that combine a participatory public culture of information sharing with operational experts competently executing decisions. Second, hyper-individualist views of privacy and other forms of risk are likely to be submerged as countries move to restrict personal freedoms and use personal data to manage public and aggregated social risks. Third, countries that are able to successfully take a longer view of planning and risk management will be at a significant advantage….(More)”.

AI Procurement in a Box

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Toolbox by the World Economic Forum: “AI Procurement in a Box is a practical guide that helps governments rethink the procurement of artificial intelligence (AI) with a focus on innovation, efficiency and ethics. Developing a new approach to the acquisition of emerging technologies such as AI will not only accelerate the adoption of AI in the administration, but also drive the development of ethical standards in AI development and deployment. Innovative procurement approaches have the potential to foster innovation, create competitive markets for AI systems and uphold public trust in the public-sector adoption of AI.

AI has the potential to vastly improve government operations and meet the needs of citizens in new ways, ranging from intelligently automating administrative processes to generating insights for public policy developments and improving public service delivery, for example, through personalized healthcare. Many public institutions are lagging behind in harnessing this powerful technology because of challenges related to data, skills and ethical deployment.

Public procurement can be an important driver of government adoption of AI. This means not only ensuring that AI-driven technologies offering the best value for money are purchased, but also driving the ethical development and deployment of innovative AI systems….(More)”.

Science Alone Can’t Solve Covid-19. The Humanities Must Help

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Anna Magdalena Elsner and Vanesa Rampton: “…To judge by news reports, the humanities are “nice to have” — think of the entertainment value of balcony music or an online book club — but not essential for helping resolve the crisis. But as the impacts of public health measures ripple through societies, languages, and cultures, thinking critically about our reaction to SARS-CoV-2 is as important as new scientific findings about the virus. The humanities can contribute to a deeper understanding of the entrenched mentalities and social dynamics that have informed society’s response to this crisis. And by encouraging us to turn a mirror on our own selves, they prompt us to question whether we are the rational individuals that we aspire to be, and whether we are sufficiently equipped, as a society, to solve our own problems.

WE ARE CREATURES of stories. Scholarship in the medical humanities has persistently emphasized that narratives are crucial for how humans experience illness. For instance, Felicity Callard, a professor of human geography, has written about how a lack of “narrative anchors” during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic led to confusion over what counts as a “mild” symptom and what the “normal” course of the disease looks like, ultimately heightening the suffering the disease caused. Existing social conditions, previous illnesses and disabilities, a sense of precarity — all of these factors influence our attitude toward disease and how it affects the way we exist in the world.

We are entangled with nature. We tend to imagine a human world separate from natural laws, but the novel coronavirus reminds us of the extent to which we are intricately bound up with the life around us. As philosopher David Benatar has noted, the emergence of the new coronavirus is most likely a result of our treatment of nonhuman animals. The virus has forced us to alter our behavior, likely triggering higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other stress-related responses. In essence, it has shown how what we think of as “non-human” can become a fundamental part of our lives in unexpected ways.

We react to crises in predictable fashion, and with foreseeable cognitive and moral failings. A growing body of work suggests that, although we want to act on knowledge, it is our nature to react instinctively and short-sightedly. Images of overcapacity intensive care units, for example, galvanize us to comply with lockdown restrictions, even as we have much more difficulty acting prudentially to prevent the emergence of such viruses. The desire for a quick solution has fueled a race for a vaccine, even though — as historian of science David Jones has noted — failures and false starts have been recurring themes in past attempts to handle epidemics. Even if a vaccine were available, it wouldn’t erase the striking disparities in health outcomes across class, race, and gender…(More)”.

Tribalism Comes for Pandemic Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst


Yuval Levin at The New Atlantis: “he Covid-19 pandemic has tested our society in countless ways. From the health system to the school system, the economy, government, and family life, we have confronted some enormous and unfamiliar challenges. But many of these stresses are united by the need to constantly adapt to new information and evidence and accept that any knowledge we might have is only provisional. This demands a kind of humble restraint — on the part of public health experts, political leaders, and the public at large — that our society now finds very hard to muster.

The virus is novel, so our understanding of what responding to it might require of us has had to be built on the fly. But the polarized culture war that pervades so much of our national life has made this kind of learning very difficult. Views developed in response to provisional assessments of incomplete evidence quickly rigidify as they are transformed into tribal markers and then cultural weapons. Soon there are left-wing and right-wing views on whether to wear masks, whether particular drugs are effective, or how to think about social distancing.

New evidence is taken as an assault on these tribal commitments, and policy adjustments in response are seen as forms of surrender to the enemy. Every new piece of information gets filtered through partisan sieves, implicitly examined to see whose interest it serves, and then embraced or rejected on that basis. We all do this. You’re probably doing it right now — skimming quickly to the end of this piece to see if I’m criticizing you or only those other people who behave so irresponsibly….(More)”.

Constructing Digital Democracies: Facebook, Arendt, and the Politics of Design

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jennifer Forestal: “Deliberative democracy requires both equality and difference, with structures that organize a cohesive public while still accommodating the unique perspectives of each participant. While institutions like laws and norms can help to provide this balance, the built environment also plays a role supporting democratic politics—both on- and off-line.

In this article, I use the work of Hannah Arendt to articulate two characteristics the built environment needs to support democratic politics: it must (1) serves as a common world, drawing users together and emphasizing their common interests and must also (2) preserve spaces of appearance, accommodating diverse perspectives and inviting disagreement. I, then, turn to the example of Facebook to show how these characteristics can be used as criteria for evaluating how well a particular digital platform supports democratic politics and providing alternative mechanisms these sites might use to fulfill their role as a public realm….(More)”.

Libraries Supporting Open Government: Areas for Engagement and Lessons Learned

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by IFLA: “This report explores the roles libraries play in different countries’ Open Government Partnership Action Plans. Within the OGP framework, states and civil society actors work together to set out commitments for reforms, implement and review the impacts in recurring two-year cycles.

In different countries’ OGP commitments over the years, libraries and library associations assisted other agencies with the implementation of their commitments, or lead their own initiatives. Offering venues for civic engagement, helping develop tools and platforms for easier access to government records, providing valuable cultural Open Data and more – libraries can play a versatile role in supporting and enabling Open Government.

The report outlines the Open Government policy areas that libraries have been engaged in, the roles they took up to help deliver on OGP commitments, and some of the key ways to maximise the impact of library interventions, drawing on the lessons from earlier OGP cycles….(More)”.

An Introduction to Ethics in Robotics and AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Christoph Bartneck, Christoph Lütge, Alan Wagner and Sean Welsh: “This open access book introduces the reader to the foundations of AI and ethics. It discusses issues of trust, responsibility, liability, privacy and risk. It focuses on the interaction between people and the AI systems and Robotics they use. Designed to be accessible for a broad audience, reading this book does not require prerequisite technical, legal or philosophical expertise. Throughout, the authors use examples to illustrate the issues at hand and conclude the book with a discussion on the application areas of AI and Robotics, in particular autonomous vehicles, automatic weapon systems and biased algorithms. A list of questions and further readings is also included for students willing to explore the topic further….(More)”.

Digital contact tracing and surveillance during COVID-19

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report on General and Child-specific Ethical Issues by Gabrielle Berman, Karen Carter, Manuel García-Herranz and Vedran Sekara: “The last few years have seen a proliferation of means and approaches being used to collect sensitive or identifiable data on children. Technologies such as facial recognition and other biometrics, increased processing capacity for ‘big data’ analysis and data linkage, and the roll-out of mobile and internet services and access have substantially changed the nature of data collection, analysis, and use.

Real-time data are essential to support decision-makers in government, development and humanitarian agencies such as UNICEF to better understand the issues facing children, plan appropriate action, monitor progress and ensure that no one is left behind. But the collation and use of personally identifiable data may also pose significant risks to children’s rights.

UNICEF has undertaken substantial work to provide a foundation to understand and balance the potential benefits and risks to children of data collection. This work includes the Industry Toolkit on Children’s Online Privacy and Freedom of Expression and a partnership with GovLab on Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) – which promotes good practice principles and has developed practical tools to assist field offices, partners and governments to make responsible data management decisions.

Balancing the need to collect data to support good decision-making versus the need to protect children from harm created through the collection of the data has never been more challenging than in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The response to the pandemic has seen an unprecedented rapid scaling up of technologies to support digital contact tracing and surveillance. The initial approach has included:

  • tracking using mobile phones and other digital devices (tablet computers, the Internet of Things, etc.)
  • surveillance to support movement restrictions, including through the use of location monitoring and facial recognition
  • a shift from in-person service provision and routine data collection to the use of remote or online platforms (including new processes for identity verification)
  • an increased focus on big data analysis and predictive modelling to fill data gaps…(More)”.

Dynamic Networks Improve Remote Decision-Making

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Abdullah Almaatouq and Alex “Sandy” Pentland: “The idea of collective intelligence is not new. Research has long shown that in a wide range of settings, groups of people working together outperform individuals toiling alone. But how do drastic shifts in circumstances, such as people working mostly at a distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, affect the quality of collective decision-making? After all, public health decisions can be a matter of life and death, and business decisions in crisis periods can have lasting effects on the economy.

During a crisis, it’s crucial to manage the flow of ideas deliberatively and strategically so that communication pathways and decision-making are optimized. Our recently published research shows that optimal communication networks can emerge from within an organization when decision makers interact dynamically and receive frequent performance feedback. The results have practical implications for effective decision-making in times of dramatic change….

Our experiments illustrate the importance of dynamically configuring network structures and enabling decision makers to obtain useful, recurring feedback. But how do you apply such findings to real-world decision-making, whether remote or face to face, when constrained by a worldwide pandemic? In such an environment, connections among individuals, teams, and networks of teams must be continually reorganized in response to shifting circumstances and challenges. No single network structure is optimal for every decision, a fact that is clear in a variety of organizational contexts.

Public sector. Consider the teams of advisers working with governments in creating guidelines to flatten the curve and help restart national economies. The teams are frequently reconfigured to leverage pertinent expertise and integrate data from many domains. They get timely feedback on how decisions affect daily realities (rates of infection, hospitalization, death) — and then adjust recommended public health protocols accordingly. Some team members move between levels, perhaps being part of a state-level team for a while, then federal, and then back to state. This flexibility ensures that people making big-picture decisions have input from those closer to the front lines.

Witness how Germany considered putting a brake on some of its reopening measures in response to a substantial, unexpected uptick in COVID-19 infections. Such time-sensitive decisions are not made effectively without a dynamic exchange of ideas and data. Decision makers must quickly adapt to facts reported by subject-area experts and regional officials who have the relevant information and analyses at a given moment….(More)“.