politics & elections

Skills for a Lifetime

Curated on May 30, 2018November 15, 2018 by admin

Nate Silver’s commencement address at Kenyon College: “….Power has shifted toward people and companies with a lot of proficiency in data science.

I obviously don’t think that’s entirely a bad thing. But it’s by no means entirely a good thing, either. You should still inherently harbor some suspicion of big, powerful institutions and their potentially self-serving and short-sighted motivations. Companies and governments that are capable of using data in powerful ways are also capable of abusing it.

What worries me the most, especially at companies like Facebook and at other Silicon Valley behemoths, is the idea that using data science allows one to remove human judgment from the equation. For instance, in announcing a recent change to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook was not “comfortable” trying to come up with a way to determine which news organizations were most trustworthy; rather, the “most objective” solution was to have readers vote on trustworthiness instead. Maybe this is a good idea and maybe it isn’t — but what bothered me was in the notion that Facebook could avoid responsibility for its algorithm by outsourcing the judgment to its readers.

I also worry about this attitude when I hear people use terms such as “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” (instead of simpler terms like “computer program”). Phrases like “machine learning” appeal to people’s notion of a push-button solution — meaning, push a button, and the computer does all your thinking for you, no human judgment required.

But the reality is that working with data requires lots of judgment. First, it requires critical judgment — and experience — when drawing inferences from data. And second, it requires moral judgment in deciding what your goals are and in establishing boundaries for your work.

Let’s talk about that first type of judgment — critical judgment. The more experience you have in working with different data sets, the more you’ll realize that the correct interpretation of the data is rarely obvious, and that the obvious-seeming interpretation isn’t always correct. Sometimes changing a single assumption or a single line of code can radically change your conclusion. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for instance, there were a series of models that all used almost exactly the same inputs — but they ranged in giving Trump as high as roughly a one-in-three chance of winning the presidency (that was FiveThirtyEight’s model) to as low as one chance in 100, based on fairly subtle aspects of how each algorithm was designed….(More)”.

Plunging response rates to household surveys worry policymakers

Curated on May 30, 2018November 15, 2018 by admin

The Economist: “Response rates to surveys are plummeting all across the rich world. Last year only around 43% of households contacted by the British government responded to the LFS, down from 70% in 2001 (see chart). In America the share of households responding to the Current Population Survey (CPS) has fallen from 94% to 85% over the same period. The rest of Europe and Canada have seen similar trends.

Poor response rates drain budgets, as it takes surveyors more effort to hunt down interviewees. And a growing reluctance to give interviewers information threatens the quality of the data. Politicians often complain about inaccurate election polls. Increasingly misleading economic surveys would be even more disconcerting.

Household surveys derive their power from randomness. Since it is impractical to get every citizen to complete a long questionnaire regularly, statisticians interview what they hope is a representative sample instead. But some types are less likely to respond than others—people who live in flats not houses, for example. A study by Christopher Bollinger of the University of Kentucky and three others matched data from the CPS with social-security records and found that poorer and very rich households were more likely to ignore surveyors than middle-income ones. Survey results will be skewed if the types who do not answer are different from those who do, or if certain types of people are more loth to answer some questions, or more likely to fib….

Statisticians have been experimenting with methods of improving response rates: new ways to ask questions, or shorter questionnaires, for example. Payment raises response rates, and some surveys offer more money for the most reluctant interviewees. But such persistence can have drawbacks. One study found that more frequent attempts to contact interviewees raised the average response rate, but lowered the average quality of answers.

Statisticians have also been exploring supplementary data sources, including administrative data. Such statistics come with two big advantages. One is that administrative data sets can include many more people and observations than is practical in a household survey, giving researchers the statistical power to run more detailed studies. Another is that governments already collect them, so they can offer huge cost savings over household surveys. For instance, Finland’s 2010 census, which was based on administrative records rather than surveys, cost its government just €850,000 ($1.1m) to produce. In contrast, America’s government spent $12.3bn on its 2010 census, roughly 200 times as much on a per-person basis.

Recent advances in computing mean that vast data sets are no longer too unwieldy for use by researchers. However, in many rich countries (those in Scandinavia are exceptions), socioeconomic statistics are collected by several agencies, meaning that researchers who want to combine, say, health records with tax data, face formidable bureaucratic and legal challenges.

Governments in English-speaking countries are especially keen to experiment. In January HMRC, the British tax authority, started publishing real-time tax data as an “experimental statistic” to be compared with labour-market data from household surveys. Two-fifths of Canada’s main statistical agency’s programmes are based at least in part on administrative records. Last year, Britain passed the Digital Economy Act, which will give its Office of National Statistics (ONS) the right to requisition data from other departments and from private sources for statistics-and-research purposes. America is exploring using such data as part of its 2020 census.

Administrative data also have their limitations (see article). They are generally not designed to be used in statistical analyses. A data set on income taxes might be representative of the population receiving benefits or earning wages, but not the population as a whole. Most important, some things are not captured in administrative records, such as well-being, informal employment and religious affiliation….(More)”.

The Challenge for Business and Society: From Risk to Reward

Curated on May 24, 2018November 15, 2018 by admin

Book by Stanley Litow that seeks to provide “A roadmap to improve corporate social responsibility”: “The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign focused a good deal of attention on the role of corporations in society, from both sides of the aisle. In the lead up to the election, big companies were accused of profiteering, plundering the environment, and ignoring (even exacerbating) societal ills ranging from illiteracy and discrimination to obesity and opioid addiction. Income inequality was laid squarely at the feet of us companies. The Trump administration then moved swiftly to scrap fiscal, social, and environmental rules that purportedly hobble business, to redirect or shut down cabinet offices historically protecting the public good, and to roll back clean power, consumer protection, living wage, healthy eating initiatives and even basic public funding for public schools. To many eyes, and the lens of history, this may usher in a new era of cowboy capitalism with big companies, unfettered by regulation and encouraged by the presidential bully pulpit, free to go about the business of making money—no matter the consequences to consumers and the commonwealth. While this may please some companies in the short term, the long term consequences might result in just the opposite.

And while the new administration promises to reduce “foreign aid” and the social safety net, Stanley S. Litow believes big companies will be motivated to step up their efforts to create jobs, reduce poverty, improve education and health, and address climate change issues — both domestically and around the world. For some leaders in the private sector this is not a matter of public relations or charity. It is integral to their corporate strategy—resulting in creating new markets, reducing risks, attracting and retaining top talent, and generating growth and realizing opportunities. Through case studies (many of which the author spearheaded at IBM), The Challenge for Business and Society provides clear guidance for companies to build their own corporate sustainability and social responsibility plans positively effecting their bottom lines producing real return on their investments….(More).

How the Enlightenment Ends

Curated on May 19, 2018November 15, 2018 by admin

Henry Kissinger in the Atlantic: “…Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason originated the thoughts and actions that shaped the contemporary world order.

But that order is now in upheaval amid a new, even more sweeping technological revolution whose consequences we have failed to fully reckon with, and whose culmination may be a world relying on machines powered by data and algorithms and ungoverned by ethical or philosophical norms.

he internet age in which we already live prefigures some of the questions and issues that AI will only make more acute. The Enlightenment sought to submit traditional verities to a liberated, analytic human reason. The internet’s purpose is to ratify knowledge through the accumulation and manipulation of ever expanding data. Human cognition loses its personal character. Individuals turn into data, and data become regnant.

Users of the internet emphasize retrieving and manipulating information over contextualizing or conceptualizing its meaning. They rarely interrogate history or philosophy; as a rule, they demand information relevant to their immediate practical needs. In the process, search-engine algorithms acquire the capacity to predict the preferences of individual clients, enabling the algorithms to personalize results and make them available to other parties for political or commercial purposes. Truth becomes relative. Information threatens to overwhelm wisdom.

Inundated via social media with the opinions of multitudes, users are diverted from introspection; in truth many technophiles use the internet to avoid the solitude they dread. All of these pressures weaken the fortitude required to develop and sustain convictions that can be implemented only by traveling a lonely road, which is the essence of creativity.

The impact of internet technology on politics is particularly pronounced. The ability to target micro-groups has broken up the previous consensus on priorities by permitting a focus on specialized purposes or grievances. Political leaders, overwhelmed by niche pressures, are deprived of time to think or reflect on context, contracting the space available for them to develop vision.

The digital world’s emphasis on speed inhibits reflection; its incentive empowers the radical over the thoughtful; its values are shaped by subgroup consensus, not by introspection. For all its achievements, it runs the risk of turning on itself as its impositions overwhelm its conveniences….

There are three areas of special concern:

First, that AI may achieve unintended results….

Second, that in achieving intended goals, AI may change human thought processes and human values….

Third, that AI may reach intended goals, but be unable to explain the rationale for its conclusions…..(More)”

The promise and peril of military applications of artificial intelligence

Curated on May 12, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Michael C. Horowitz at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “Artificial intelligence (AI) is having a moment in the national security space. While the public may still equate the notion of artificial intelligence in the military context with the humanoid robots of the Terminatorfranchise, there has been a significant growth in discussions about the national security consequences of artificial intelligence. These discussions span academia, business, and governments, from Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom’s concern about the existential risk to humanity posed by artificial intelligence to Tesla founder Elon Musk’s concern that artificial intelligence could trigger World War III to Vladimir Putin’s statement that leadership in AI will be essential to global power in the 21st century.

What does this really mean, especially when you move beyond the rhetoric of revolutionary change and think about the real world consequences of potential applications of artificial intelligence to militaries? Artificial intelligence is not a weapon. Instead, artificial intelligence, from a military perspective, is an enabler, much like electricity and the combustion engine. Thus, the effect of artificial intelligence on military power and international conflict will depend on particular applications of AI for militaries and policymakers. What follows are key issues for thinking about the military consequences of artificial intelligence, including principles for evaluating what artificial intelligence “is” and how it compares to technological changes in the past, what militaries might use artificial intelligence for, potential limitations to the use of artificial intelligence, and then the impact of AI military applications for international politics.

The potential promise of AI—including its ability to improve the speed and accuracy of everything from logistics to battlefield planning and to help improve human decision-making—is driving militaries around the world to accelerate their research into and development of AI applications. For the US military, AI offers a new avenue to sustain its military superiority while potentially reducing costs and risk to US soldiers. For others, especially Russia and China, AI offers something potentially even more valuable—the ability to disrupt US military superiority. National competition in AI leadership is as much or more an issue of economic competition and leadership than anything else, but the potential military impact is also clear. There is significant uncertainty about the pace and trajectory of artificial intelligence research, which means it is always possible that the promise of AI will turn into more hype than reality. Moreover, safety and reliability concerns could limit the ways that militaries choose to employ AI…(More)”,

Israeli, French Politicians Endorse Blockchain for Governance Transparency

Curated on May 10, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Komfie Manolo at Cryptovest: “Blockchain is moving into the world’s political systems, with several influential political figures in Israel and France recently emerging as new believers in the technology. They are betting on blockchain for more transparent governance and have joined the decentralized platform developed by Coalichain.

Among the seven Israeli politicians to endorse the platform are former deputy minister and interior minister Eli Yishay, deputy defense minister Eli Ben-Dan, and HaBait HaYehudi leader Shulamit Mualem-Refaeli. The move for a more accountable democracy has also been supported by Frederic Lefebvre, the founder of French political party Agir.

Levi Samama, co-founder and CEO of Coalichain, said that support for the platform was “a positive indication that politicians are actively seeking ways to be transparent and direct in the way they communicate with the public. In order to impact existing governance mechanisms we need the support and engagement of politicians and citizens alike.”

Acceptance of blockchain is gaining traction in the world of politics.

During last month’s presidential election in Russia, blockchain was used by state-run public opinion research center VTSIOM to track exit polls.

In the US, budding political group Indie Party wants to redefine the country’s political environment by providing an alternative to the established two-party system with a political marketplace that uses blockchain and cryptocurrency….(More)”

Bringing The Public Back In: Can the Comment Process be Fixed?

Curated on May 10, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Remarks of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, US Federal Communications Commission: “…But what we are facing now does not reflect what has come before. Because it is apparent the civic infrastructure we have for accepting public comment in the rulemaking process is not built for the digital age. As the Administrative Conference of the United States acknowledges, while the basic framework for rulemaking from 1946 has stayed the same, “the technological landscape has evolved dramatically.”

Let’s call that an understatement. Though this problem may seem small in the scheme of things, the impact is big. Administrative decisions made in Washington affect so much of our day-to-day life. They involve everything from internet openness to retirement planning to the availability of loans and the energy sources that power our homes and businesses. So much of the decision making that affects our future takes place in the administrative state.

The American public deserves a fair shot at participating in these decisions. Expert agencies are duty bound to hear from everyone, not just those who can afford to pay for expert lawyers and lobbyists. The framework from the Administrative Procedure Act is designed to serve the public—by seeking their input—but increasingly they are getting shut out. Our agency internet systems are ill-equipped to handle the mass automation and fraud that already is corrupting channels for public comment. It’s only going to get worse. The mechanization and weaponization of the comment-filing process has only just begun.

We need to something about it. Because ensuring the public has a say in what happens in Washington matters. Because trust in public institutions matters. A few months ago Edelman released its annual Trust Barometer and reported than only a third of Americans trust the government—a 14 percentage point decline from last year.

Fixing that decline is worth the effort. We can start with finding ways that give all Americans—no matter who they are or where they live—a fighting chance at making Washington listen to what they think.

We can’t give in to the easy cynicism that results when our public channels are flooded with comments from dead people, stolen identities, batches of bogus filings, and commentary that originated from Russian e-mail addresses. We can’t let this deluge of fake filings further delegitimize Washington decisions and erode public trust.

No one said digital age democracy was going to be easy. But we’ve got to brace ourselves and strengthen our civic infrastructure to withstand what is underway. This is true at regulatory agencies—and across our political landscape. Because if you look for them you will find uneasy parallels between the flood of fake comments in regulatory proceedings and the barrage of posts on social media that was part of a conspicuous campaign to influence our last election. There is a concerted effort to exploit our openness. It deserves a concerted response….(More)”

Examining Civil Society Legitimacy

Curated on May 2, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Saskia Brechenmacher and Thomas Carothers at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “Civil society is under stress globally as dozens of governments across multiple regions are reducing space for independent civil society organizations, restricting or prohibiting international support for civic groups, and propagating government-controlled nongovernmental organizations. Although civic activists in most places are no strangers to repression, this wave of anti–civil society actions and attitudes is the widest and deepest in decades. It is an integral part of two broader global shifts that raise concerns about the overall health of the international liberal order: the stagnation of democracy worldwide and the rekindling of nationalistic sovereignty, often with authoritarian features.

Attacks on civil society take myriad forms, from legal and regulatory measures to physical harassment, and usually include efforts to delegitimize civil society. Governments engaged in closing civil society spaces not only target specific civic groups but also spread doubt about the legitimacy of the very idea of an autonomous civic sphere that can activate and channel citizens’ interests and demands. These legitimacy attacks typically revolve around four arguments or accusations:

That civil society organizations are self-appointed rather than elected, and thus do not represent the popular will. For example, the Hungarian government justified new restrictions on foreign-funded civil society organizations by arguing that “society is represented by the elected governments and elected politicians, and no one voted for a single civil organization.”
That civil society organizations receiving foreign funding are accountable to external rather than domestic constituencies, and advance foreign rather than local agendas. In India, for example, the Modi government has denounced foreign-funded environmental NGOs as “anti-national,” echoing similar accusations in Egypt, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, and elsewhere.
That civil society groups are partisan political actors disguised as nonpartisan civic actors: political wolves in citizen sheep’s clothing. Governments denounce both the goals and methods of civic groups as being illegitimately political, and hold up any contacts between civic groups and opposition parties as proof of the accusation.
That civil society groups are elite actors who are not representative of the people they claim to represent. Critics point to the foreign education backgrounds, high salaries, and frequent foreign travel of civic activists to portray them as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens and only working to perpetuate their own privileged lifestyle.

Attacks on civil society legitimacy are particularly appealing for populist leaders who draw on their nationalist, majoritarian, and anti-elite positioning to deride civil society groups as foreign, unrepresentative, and elitist. Other leaders borrow from the populist toolbox to boost their negative campaigns against civil society support. The overall aim is clear: to close civil society space, governments seek to exploit and widen existing cleavages between civil society and potential supporters in the population. Rather than engaging with the substantive issues and critiques raised by civil society groups, they draw public attention to the real and alleged shortcomings of civil society actors as channels for citizen grievances and demands.

The widening attacks on the legitimacy of civil society oblige civil society organizations and their supporters to revisit various fundamental questions: What are the sources of legitimacy of civil society? How can civil society organizations strengthen their legitimacy to help them weather government attacks and build strong coalitions to advance their causes? And how can international actors ensure that their support reinforces rather than undermines the legitimacy of local civic activism?

To help us find answers to these questions, we asked civil society activists working in ten countries around the world—from Guatemala to Tunisia and from Kenya to Thailand—to write about their experiences with and responses to legitimacy challenges. Their essays follow here. We conclude with a final section in which we extract and discuss the key themes that emerge from their contributions as well as our own research…

Saskia Brechenmacher and Thomas Carothers, The Legitimacy Landscape
César Rodríguez-Garavito, Objectivity Without Neutrality: Reflections From Colombia
Walter Flores, Legitimacy From Below: Supporting Indigenous Rights in Guatemala
Arthur Larok, Pushing Back: Lessons From Civic Activism in Uganda
Kimani Njogu, Confronting Partisanship and Divisions in Kenya
Youssef Cherif, Delegitimizing Civil Society in Tunisia
Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, The Legitimacy Deficit of Thailand’s Civil Society
Özge Zihnioğlu, Navigating Politics and Polarization in Turkey
Stefánia Kapronczay, Beyond Apathy and Mistrust: Defending Civic Activism in Hungary
Zohra Moosa, On Our Own Behalf: The Legitimacy of Feminist Movements
Nilda Bullain and Douglas Rutzen, All for One, One for All: Protecting Sectoral Legitimacy
Saskia Brechenmacher and Thomas Carothers, The Legitimacy Menu….(More)”.

Democratic deliberation should be an integral part of policy making

Curated on May 1, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthew Taylor at the RSA: “I have, more or less, chosen the topic for my annual lecture. There’s just one problem. How do I get anyone to take notice?…The lecture will make the case for democratic deliberation to become an integral part of our political and policy making processes. I’ll do this by highlighting just a few of the many problems with our current form of representative democracy (and what is seen as its main alternative, direct democracy). I will argue that not only is deliberation the best way to gauge public preferences on many issues, but that by adding depth to debates and engagement it can help repair the democratic system as a whole. Indeed, deliberation is best seen not as an alternative to elections but as a way of making politics more about representing people and less about the fight between – often deeply unrepresentative – vested interests.

Making democratic deliberation a reality

An important and new aspect of my argument will be to suggest a set of practical measures. These are the policies that would need to be enacted if we wanted to take deliberation from the exotic and occasional margins of policy making instead to make it a recognised, vital and permanent part of how we are governed. For example, one might be that Government commit to holding at least two fully constituted citizens’ juries every year and to the relevant minister making a formal response to each jury’s outcomes in a statement to the House.

My speech may quote the Hansard Society democratic audit published today. This shows, on the one hand, an increase in people’s interest in politics and in their intention to vote but, on the other, very low ratings for the way we are governed and for the trustworthiness and efficacy of political parties; institutions which continue to be central to the way our democracy functions. …

Democratic deliberation is not the same as direct democracy nor is it simply another form of general engagement. It is the use of specific and robust methods to inform representative groups of ordinary citizens so that these citizens, having heard every side of an argument and having had a chance to deliberate, can reach a view which – like a jury in a criminal trial – can stand for the conclusions which would have been reached by any representative group going through the same process. As I will explain in my lecture, these processes have been used successfully on a wide range of issues in a wide variety of jurisdictions. The problem is not about whether deliberation works: it is about how to make it a core part of how we do politics….(More)”.