Cross-border data flows in Africa: Continental ambitions and political realities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Melody Musoni, Poorva Karkare and Chloe Teevan: “Africa must prioritise data usage and cross-border data sharing to realise the goals of the African Continental Free Trade Area and to drive innovation and AI development. Accessible and shareable data is essential for the growth and success of the digital economy, enabling innovations and economic opportunities, especially in a rapidly evolving landscape.

African countries, through the African Union (AU), have a common vision of sharing data across borders to boost economic growth. However, the adopted continental digital policies are often inconsistently applied at the national level, where some member states implement restrictive measures like data localisation that limit the free flow of data.

The paper looks at national policies that often prioritise domestic interests and how those conflict with continental goals. This is due to differences in political ideologies, socio-economic conditions, security concerns and economic priorities. This misalignment between national agendas and the broader AU strategy is shaped by each country’s unique context, as seen in the examples of Senegal, Nigeria and Mozambique, which face distinct challenges in implementing the continental vision.

The paper concludes with actionable recommendations for the AU, member states and the partnership with the European Union. It suggests that the AU enhances support for data-sharing initiatives and urges member states to focus on policy alignment, address data deficiencies, build data infrastructure and find new ways to use data. It also highlights how the EU can strengthen its support for Africa’s datasharing goals…(More)”.

Machines of Loving Grace

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Dario Amodei: “I think and talk a lot about the risks of powerful AI. The company I’m the CEO of, Anthropic, does a lot of research on how to reduce these risks. Because of this, people sometimes draw the conclusion that I’m a pessimist or “doomer” who thinks AI will be mostly bad or dangerous. I don’t think that at all. In fact, one of my main reasons for focusing on risks is that they’re the only thing standing between us and what I see as a fundamentally positive future. I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be.

In this essay I try to sketch out what that upside might look like—what a world with powerful AI might look like if everything goes right. Of course no one can know the future with any certainty or precision, and the effects of powerful AI are likely to be even more unpredictable than past technological changes, so all of this is unavoidably going to consist of guesses. But I am aiming for at least educated and useful guesses, which capture the flavor of what will happen even if most details end up being wrong. I’m including lots of details mainly because I think a concrete vision does more to advance discussion than a highly hedged and abstract one…(More)”.

The Unaccountability Machine — why do big systems make bad decisions?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

FT Review of book by Dan Davies: “The starting point of Davies’ entertaining, insightful book is that the uncontrolled proliferation of accountability sinks is one of the central drivers of what historian Adam Tooze calls the “polycrisis” of the 21st century. Their influence reaches far beyond frustrated customers endlessly on hold to “computer says no” service departments. In finance, banking crises regularly recur — yet few individual bankers are found at fault. If politicians’ promises flop, they complain they have no power; the Deep State is somehow to blame.

The origin of the problem, Davies argues, is the managerial revolution that began after the second world war, abetted by the advent of cheap computing power and the diffusion of algorithmic decision-making into every sphere of life. These systems have ended up “acting like a car’s crumple-zone to shield any individual manager from a disastrous decision”, he writes. While attractive from the individual’s perspective, they scramble the feedback on which society as a whole depends.

Yet the story, Davies continues, is not so simple. Seen from another perspective, accountability sinks are entirely reasonable responses to the ever-increasing complexity of modern economies. Standardisation and explicit policies and procedures offer the only feasible route to meritocratic recruitment, consistent service and efficient work. Relying on the personal discretion of middle managers would simply result in a different kind of mess…(More)”.

China’s Hinterland Becomes A Critical Datascape

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Gary Zhexi Zhang: “In 2014, the southwestern province of Guizhou, a historically poor and mountainous area, beat out rival regions to become China’s first “Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zone,” as part of a national directive to develop the region — which is otherwise best known as an exporter of tobacco, spirits and coal — into the infrastructural backbone of the country’s data industry. Since then, vast investment has poured into the province. Thousands of miles of highway and high-speed rail tunnel through the mountains. Driving through the province can feel vertiginous: Of the hundred highest bridges in the world, almost half are in Guizhou, and almost all were built in the last 15 years.

In 2015, Xi Jinping visited Gui’an New Area to inaugurate the province’s transformation into China’s “Big Data Valley,” exemplifying the central government’s goal to establish “high quality social and economic development,” ubiquitously advertised through socialist-style slogans plastered on highways and city streets…(More)”.

Regulating the Direction of Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Joshua S. Gans: “This paper examines the regulation of technological innovation direction under uncertainty about potential harms. We develop a model with two competing technological paths and analyze various regulatory interventions. Our findings show that market forces tend to inefficiently concentrate research on leading paths. We demonstrate that ex post regulatory instruments, particularly liability regimes, outperform ex ante restrictions in most scenarios. The optimal regulatory approach depends critically on the magnitude of potential harm relative to technological benefits. Our analysis reveals subtle insurance motives in resource allocation across research paths, challenging common intuitions about diversification. These insights have important implications for regulating emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, suggesting the need for flexible, adaptive regulatory frameworks…(More)”.

Rejecting Public Utility Data Monopolies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Amy L. Stein: “The threat of monopoly power looms large today. Although not the telecommunications and tobacco monopolies of old, the Goliaths of Big Tech have become today’s target for potential antitrust violations. It is not only their control over the social media infrastructure and digital advertising technologies that gives people pause, but their monopolistic collection, use, and sale of customer data. But large technology companies are not the only private companies that have exclusive access to your data; that can crowd out competitors; and that can hold, use, or sell your data with little to no regulation. These other private companies are not data companies, platforms, or even brokers. They are public utilities.

Although termed “public utilities,” these entities are overwhelmingly private, shareholder-owned entities. Like private Big Tech, utilities gather incredible amounts of data from customers and use this data in various ways. And like private Big Tech, these utilities can exercise exclusionary and self-dealing anticompetitive behavior with respect to customer data. But there is one critical difference— unlike Big Tech, utilities enjoy an implied immunity from antitrust laws. This state action immunity has historically applied to utility provision of essential services like electricity and heat. As utilities find themselves in the position of unsuspecting data stewards, however, there is a real and unexplored question about whether their long- enjoyed antitrust immunity should extend to their data practices.

As the first exploration of this question, this Article tests the continuing application and rationale of the state action immunity doctrine to the evolving services that a utility provides as the grid becomes digitized. It demonstrates the importance of staunching the creep of state action immunity over utility data practices. And it recognizes the challenges of developing remedies for such data practices that do not disrupt the state-sanctioned monopoly powers of utilities over the provision of essential services. This Article analyzes both antitrust and regulatory remedies, including a new customer- focused “data duty,” as possible mechanisms to enhance consumer (ratepayer) welfare in this space. Exposing utility data practices to potential antitrust liability may be just the lever that is needed to motivate states, public utility commissions, and utilities to develop a more robust marketplace for energy data…(More)”.

Harnessing Technology for Inclusive Prosperity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Brahima Sangafowa Coulibaly and Zia Qureshi: “Transformative new technologies are reshaping economies and societies. But as they create new opportunities, they also pose new challenges, not least of which is rising inequality. Increased disparities and related anxieties are stoking societal discontent and political ferment. Harnessing technological transformation in ways that foster its benefits, contain risks, and build inclusive prosperity is a major public policy challenge of our time and one that motivates this book.

In what ways are the new technologies altering markets, business models, work, and, in turn, economic growth and income distribution? How are they affecting inequality within advanced and emerging economies and the prospects for economic convergence between them? What are the implications for public policy? What new thinking and adaptations are needed to realign institutions and policies, at national and global levels, with the new dynamics of the digital era?

This book addresses these questions. It seeks to promote ideas and actions to manage digital transformation and the latest advances in artificial intelligence with foresight and purpose to shape a more prosperous and inclusive future…(More)”

Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Nicol Turner Lee: “President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the United States would close the digital divide under his leadership. However, the divide still affects people and communities across the country. The complex and persistent reality is that millions of residents live in digital deserts, and many more face disproportionate difficulties when it comes to getting and staying online, especially people of color, seniors, rural residents, and farmers in remote areas.

Economic and health disparities are worsening in rural communities without available internet access. Students living in urban digital deserts with little technology exposure are ill prepared to compete for emerging occupations. Even seniors struggle to navigate the aging process without access to online information and remote care.

In this book, Nicol Turner Lee, a leading expert on the American digital divide, uses personal stories from individuals around the country to show how the emerging digital underclass is navigating the spiraling online economy, while sharing their joys and hopes for an equitable and just future.

Turner Lee argues that achieving digital equity is crucial for the future of America’s global competitiveness and requires radical responses to offset the unintended consequences of increasing digitization. In the end, “Digitally Invisible” proposes a pathway to more equitable access to existing and emerging technologies, while encouraging readers to weigh in on this shared goal…(More)”.

(Almost) 200 Years of News-Based Economic Sentiment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jules H. van Binsbergen, Svetlana Bryzgalova, Mayukh Mukhopadhyay & Varun Sharma: “Using text from 200 million pages of 13,000 US local newspapers and machine learning methods, we construct a 170-year-long measure of economic sentiment at the country and state levels, that expands existing measures in both the time series (by more than a century) and the cross-section. Our measure predicts GDP (both nationally and locally), consumption, and employment growth, even after controlling for commonly-used predictors, as well as monetary policy decisions. Our measure is distinct from the information in expert forecasts and leads its consensus value. Interestingly, news coverage has become increasingly negative across all states in the past half-century…(More)”.

A new index is using AI tools to measure U.S. economic growth in a broader way

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jeff Cox: “Measuring the strength of the sprawling U.S. economy is no easy task, so one firm is sending artificial intelligence in to do the job.

The Zeta Economic Index, launched Monday, uses generative AI to analyze what its developers call “trillions of behavioral signals,” largely focused on consumer activity, to score growth on both a broad level of health and a separate measure on stability.

At its core, the index will gauge online and offline activity across eight categories, aiming to give a comprehensive look that incorporates standard economic data points such as unemployment and retail sales combined with high-frequency information for the AI age.

“The algorithm is looking at traditional economic indicators that you would normally look at. But then inside of our proprietary algorithm, we’re ingesting the behavioral data and transaction data of 240 million Americans, which nobody else has,” said David Steinberg, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Zeta Global.

“So instead of looking at the data in the rearview mirror like everybody else, we’re trying to put it out in advance to give a 30-day advanced snapshot of where the economy is going,” he added…(More)”.