The promise and perils of big gender data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Bapu Vaitla, Stefaan Verhulst, Linus Bengtsson, Marta C. González, Rebecca Furst-Nichols & Emily Courey Pryor in Special Issue on Big Data of Nature Medicine: “Women and girls are legally and socially marginalized in many countries. As a result, policymakers neglect key gendered issues such as informal labor markets, domestic violence, and mental health1. The scientific community can help push such topics onto policy agendas, but science itself is riven by inequality: women are underrepresented in academia, and gendered research is rarely a priority of funding agencies.

However, the critical importance of better gender data for societal well-being is clear. Mental health is a particularly striking example. Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease database suggest that depressive and anxiety disorders are the second leading cause of morbidity among females between 10 and 63 years of age2. But little is known about the risk factors that contribute to mental illness among specific groups of women and girls, the challenges of seeking care for depression and anxiety, or the long-term consequences of undiagnosed and untreated illness. A lack of data similarly impedes policy action on domestic and intimate-partner violence, early marriage, and sexual harassment, among many other topics.

‘Big data’ can help fill that gap. The massive amounts of information passively generated by electronic devices represent a rich portrait of human life, capturing where people go, the decisions they make, and how they respond to changes in their socio-economic environment. For example, mobile-phone data allow better understanding of health-seeking behavior as well as the dynamics of infectious-disease transmission3. Social-media platforms generate the world’s largest database of thoughts and emotions—information that, if leveraged responsibly, can be used to infer gendered patterns of mental health4. Remote sensors, especially satellites, can be used in conjunction with traditional data sources to increase the spatial and temporal granularity of data on women’s economic activity and health status5.

But the risk of gendered algorithmic bias is a serious obstacle to the responsible use of big data. Data are not value free; they reproduce the conscious and unconscious attitudes held by researchers, programmers, and institutions. Consider, for example, the training datasets on which the interpretation of big data depends. Training datasets establish the association between two or more directly observed phenomena of interest—for example, the mental health of a platform user (typically collected through a diagnostic survey) and the semantic content of the user’s social-media posts. These associations are then used to develop algorithms that interpret big data streams. In the example here, the (directly unobserved) mental health of a large population of social-media users would be inferred from their observed posts….(More)”.

How digital sleuths unravelled the mystery of Iran’s plane crash

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chris Stokel-Walker at Wired: “The video shows a faint glow in the distance, zig-zagging like a piece of paper caught in an underdraft, slowly meandering towards the horizon. Then there’s a bright flash and the trees in the foreground are thrown into shadow as Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 hits the ground early on the morning of January 8, killing all 176 people on board.

At first, it seemed like an accident – engine failure was fingered as the cause – until the first video showing the plane seemingly on fire as it weaved to the ground surfaced. United States officials started to investigate, and a more complicated picture emerged. It appeared that the plane had been hit by a missile, corroborated by a second video that appears to show the moment the missile ploughs into the Boeing 737-800. While military and intelligence officials at governments around the world were conducting their inquiries in secret, a team of investigators were using open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques to piece together the puzzle of flight PS752.

It’s not unusual nowadays for OSINT to lead the way in decoding key news events. When Sergei Skripal was poisoned, Bellingcat, an open-source intelligence website, tracked and identified his killers as they traipsed across London and Salisbury. They delved into military records to blow the cover of agents sent to kill. And in the days after the Ukraine Airlines plane crashed into the ground outside Tehran, Bellingcat and The New York Times have blown a hole in the supposition that the downing of the aircraft was an engine failure. The pressure – and the weight of public evidence – compelled Iranian officials to admit overnight on January 10 that the country had shot down the plane “in error”.

So how do they do it? “You can think of OSINT as a puzzle. To get the complete picture, you need to find the missing pieces and put everything together,” says Loránd Bodó, an OSINT analyst at Tech versus Terrorism, a campaign group. The team at Bellingcat and other open-source investigators pore over publicly available material. Thanks to our propensity to reach for our cameraphones at the sight of any newsworthy incident, video and photos are often available, posted to social media in the immediate aftermath of events. (The person who shot and uploaded the second video in this incident, of the missile appearing to hit the Boeing plane was a perfect example: they grabbed their phone after they heard “some sort of shot fired”.) “Open source investigations essentially involve the collection, preservation, verification, and analysis of evidence that is available in the public domain to build a picture of what happened,” says Yvonne McDermott Rees, a lecturer at Swansea University….(More)”.

Machine Learning, Big Data and the Regulation of Consumer Credit Markets: The Case of Algorithmic Credit Scoring

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Paper by Nikita Aggarwal et al: “Recent advances in machine learning (ML) and Big Data techniques have facilitated the development of more sophisticated, automated consumer credit scoring models — a trend referred to as ‘algorithmic credit scoring’ in recognition of the increasing reliance on computer (particularly ML) algorithms for credit scoring. This chapter, which forms part of the 2018 collection of short essays ‘Autonomous Systems and the Law’, examines the rise of algorithmic credit scoring, and considers its implications for the regulation of consumer creditworthiness assessment and consumer credit markets more broadly.

The chapter argues that algorithmic credit scoring, and the Big Data and ML technologies underlying it, offer both benefits and risks for consumer credit markets. On the one hand, it could increase allocative efficiency and distributional fairness in these markets, by widening access to, and lowering the cost of, credit, particularly for ‘thin-file’ and ‘no-file’ consumers. On the other hand, algorithmic credit scoring could undermine distributional fairness and efficiency, by perpetuating discrimination in lending against certain groups and by enabling the more effective exploitation of borrowers.

The chapter considers how consumer financial regulation should respond to these risks, focusing on the UK/EU regulatory framework. As a general matter, it argues that the broadly principles and conduct-based approach of UK consumer credit regulation provides the flexibility necessary for regulators and market participants to respond dynamically to these risks. However, this approach could be enhanced through the introduction of more robust product oversight and governance requirements for firms in relation to their use of ML systems and processes. Supervisory authorities could also themselves make greater use of ML and Big Data techniques in order to strengthen the supervision of consumer credit firms.

Finally, the chapter notes that cross-sectoral data protection regulation, recently updated in the EU under the GDPR, offers an important avenue to mitigate risks to consumers arising from the use of their personal data. However, further guidance is needed on the application and scope of this regime in the consumer financial context….(More)”.

The Wild Wild West of Data Hoarding in the Federal Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

ActiveNavigation: “There is a strong belief, both in the public and private sector, that the worst thing you can do with a piece of data is to delete it. The government stores all sorts of data, from traffic logs to home ownership statistics. Data is obviously incredibly important to the Federal Government – but storing large amounts of it poses significant compliance and security risks – especially with the rise of Nation State hackers. As the risk of being breached continues to rise, why is the government not tackling their data storage problem head on?

The Myth of “Free” Storage

Storage is cheap, especially compared to 10-15 years ago. Cloud storage has made it easier than ever to store swaths of information, creating what some call “digital landfills.” However, the true cost of storage isn’t in the ones and zeros sitting on the server somewhere. It’s the business cost.

As information stores continue to grow, the Federal Government’s ability to execute moving information to the correct place gets harder and harder, not to mention more expensive. The U.S. Government has a duty to provide accurate, up-to-date information to its taxpayers – meaning that sharing “bad data” is not an option.

The Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM) reports that half of an organization’s retained data has no value. So far, in 2019, through our work with Federal Agencies, we have discovered that this number, is in fact, low. Over 66% of data we’ve indexed, by the client’s definition, has fallen into that “junk” category. Eliminating junk data paves the way for greater accessibility, transparency and major financial savings. But what is “junk” data?

Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial (ROT) Data

Data is important – but if you can’t assign a value to it, it can become impossible to manage. Simply put, ROT data is digital information that an organization retains, that has no business or legal value. To be efficient from both a cyber hygiene and business perspective, the government needs to get better at purging their ROT data.

Again, purging data doesn’t just help with the hard cost of storage and backups, etc. For example, think about what needs to be done to answer a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. You have a petabyte of data. You have at least a billion documents you need to funnel through to be able to respond to that FOIA request. By eliminating 50% of your ROT data, you probably have also reduced your FOIA response time by 50%.

Records and information governance, taken at face value, might seem fairly esoteric. It may not be as fun or as sexy as the new Space Force, but the reality is, the only way to know if the government is doing what it says it’s through records and information. You can’t answer an FOIA request if there’s no material. You can’t answer Congress if the material isn’t accurate. Being able to access timely, accurate information is critical. That’s why NARA is advocating a move to electronic records.…(More)”.

The future is intelligent: Harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence in Africa

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Youssef Travaly and Kevin Muvunyi at Brookings: “…AI in particular presents countless avenues for both the public and private sectors to optimize solutions to the most crucial problems facing the continent today, especially for struggling industries. For example, in health care, AI solutions can help scarce personnel and facilities do more with less by speeding initial processing, triage, diagnosis, and post-care follow up. Furthermore, AI-based pharmacogenomics applications, which focus on the likely response of an individual to therapeutic drugs based on certain genetic markers, can be used to tailor treatments. Considering the genetic diversity found on the African continent, it is highly likely that the application of these technologies in Africa will result in considerable advancement in medical treatment on a global level.

In agriculture, Abdoulaye Baniré Diallo, co-founder and chief scientific officer of the AI startup My Intelligent Machines, is working with advanced algorithms and machine learning methods to leverage genomic precision in livestock production models. With genomic precision, it is possible to build intelligent breeding programs that minimize the ecological footprint, address changing consumer demands, and contribute to the well-being of people and animals alike through the selection of good genetic characteristics at an early stage of the livestock production process. These are just a few examples that illustrate the transformative potential of AI technology in Africa.

However, a number of structural challenges undermine rapid adoption and implementation of AI on the continent. Inadequate basic and digital infrastructure seriously erodes efforts to activate AI-powered solutions as it reduces crucial connectivity. (For more on strategies to improve Africa’s digital infrastructure, see the viewpoint on page 67 of the full report). A lack of flexible and dynamic regulatory systems also frustrates the growth of a digital ecosystem that favors AI technology, especially as tech leaders want to scale across borders. Furthermore, lack of relevant technical skills, particularly for young people, is a growing threat. This skills gap means that those who would have otherwise been at the forefront of building AI are left out, preventing the continent from harnessing the full potential of transformative technologies and industries.

Similarly, the lack of adequate investments in research and development is an important obstacle. Africa must develop innovative financial instruments and public-private partnerships to fund human capital development, including a focus on industrial research and innovation hubs that bridge the gap between higher education institutions and the private sector to ensure the transition of AI products from lab to market….(More)”.

Data Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Feras Batarseh and Ruixin Yang: “Data Democracy: At the Nexus of Artificial Intelligence, Software Development, and Knowledge Engineering provides a manifesto to data democracy. After reading the chapters of this book, you are informed and suitably warned! You are already part of the data republic, and you (and all of us) need to ensure that our data fall in the right hands. Everything you click, buy, swipe, try, sell, drive, or fly is a data point. But who owns the data? At this point, not you! You do not even have access to most of it. The next best empire of our planet is one who owns and controls the world’s best dataset. If you consume or create data, if you are a citizen of the data republic (willingly or grudgingly), and if you are interested in making a decision or finding the truth through data-driven analysis, this book is for you. A group of experts, academics, data science researchers, and industry practitioners gathered to write this manifesto about data democracy.

Key Features

  • The future of the data republic, life within a data democracy, and our digital freedoms
  • An in-depth analysis of open science, open data, open source software, and their future challenges
  • A comprehensive review of data democracy’s implications within domains such as: healthcare, space exploration, earth sciences, business, and psychology
  • The democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and data issues such as: Bias, imbalance, context, and knowledge extraction
  • A systematic review of AI methods applied to software engineering problems…(More)”.

Technology Can't Fix Algorithmic Injustice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Annette Zimmerman, Elena Di Rosa and Hochan Kima at Boston Review: “A great deal of recent public debate about artificial intelligence has been driven by apocalyptic visions of the future. Humanity, we are told, is engaged in an existential struggle against its own creation. Such worries are fueled in large part by tech industry leaders and futurists, who anticipate systems so sophisticated that they can perform general tasks and operate autonomously, without human control. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates have all publicly expressed their concerns about the advent of this kind of “strong” (or “general”) AI—and the associated existential risk that it may pose for humanity. In Hawking’s words, the development of strong AI “could spell the end of the human race.”

These are legitimate long-term worries. But they are not all we have to worry about, and placing them center stage distracts from ethical questions that AI is raising here and now. Some contend that strong AI may be only decades away, but this focus obscures the reality that “weak” (or “narrow”) AI is already reshaping existing social and political institutions. Algorithmic decision making and decision support systems are currently being deployed in many high-stakes domains, from criminal justice, law enforcement, and employment decisions to credit scoring, school assignment mechanisms, health care, and public benefits eligibility assessments. Never mind the far-off specter of doomsday; AI is already here, working behind the scenes of many of our social systems.

What responsibilities and obligations do we bear for AI’s social consequences in the present—not just in the distant future? To answer this question, we must resist the learned helplessness that has come to see AI development as inevitable. Instead, we should recognize that developing and deploying weak AI involves making consequential choices—choices that demand greater democratic oversight not just from AI developers and designers, but from all members of society….(More)”.

Data as infrastructure? A study of data sharing legal regimes

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Paper by Charlotte Ducuing: “The article discusses the concept of infrastructure in the digital environment, through a study of three data sharing legal regimes: the Public Sector Information Directive (PSI Directive), the discussions on in-vehicle data governance and the freshly adopted data sharing legal regime in the Electricity Directive.

While aiming to contribute to the scholarship on data governance, the article deliberately focuses on network industries. Characterised by the existence of physical infrastructure, they have a special relationship to digitisation and ‘platformisation’ and are exposed to specific risks. Adopting an explanatory methodology, the article exposes that these regimes are based on two close but different sources of inspiration, yet intertwined and left unclear. By targeting entities deemed ‘monopolist’ with regard to the data they create and hold, data sharing obligations are inspired from competition law and especially the essential facility doctrine. On the other hand, beneficiaries appear to include both operators in related markets needing data to conduct their business (except for the PSI Directive), and third parties at large to foster innovation. The latter rationale illustrates what is called here a purposive view of data as infrastructure. The underlying understanding of ‘raw’ data (management) as infrastructure for all to use may run counter the ability for the regulated entities to get a fair remuneration for ‘their’ data.

Finally, the article pleads for more granularity when mandating data sharing obligations depending upon the purpose. Shifting away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, the regulation of data could also extend to the ensuing context-specific data governance regime, subject to further research…(More)”.

Paging Dr. Google: How the Tech Giant Is Laying Claim to Health Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Wall Street Journal: “Roughly a year ago, Google offered health-data company Cerner Corp.an unusually rich proposal.

Cerner was interviewing Silicon Valley giants to pick a storage provider for 250 million health records, one of the largest collections of U.S. patient data. Google dispatched former chief executive Eric Schmidt to personally pitch Cerner over several phone calls and offered around $250 million in discounts and incentives, people familiar with the matter say. 

Google had a bigger goal in pushing for the deal than dollars and cents: a way to expand its effort to collect, analyze and aggregate health data on millions of Americans. Google representatives were vague in answering questions about how Cerner’s data would be used, making the health-care company’s executives wary, the people say. Eventually, Cerner struck a storage deal with Amazon.com Inc. instead.

The failed Cerner deal reveals an emerging challenge to Google’s move into health care: gaining the trust of health care partners and the public. So far, that has hardly slowed the search giant.

Google has struck partnerships with some of the country’s largest hospital systems and most-renowned health-care providers, many of them vast in scope and few of their details previously reported. In just a few years, the company has achieved the ability to view or analyze tens of millions of patient health records in at least three-quarters of U.S. states, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of contractual agreements. 

In certain instances, the deals allow Google to access personally identifiable health information without the knowledge of patients or doctors. The company can review complete health records, including names, dates of birth, medications and other ailments, according to people familiar with the deals.

The prospect of tech giants’ amassing huge troves of health records has raised concerns among lawmakers, patients and doctors, who fear such intimate data could be used without individuals’ knowledge or permission, or in ways they might not anticipate. 

Google is developing a search tool, similar to its flagship search engine, in which patient information is stored, collated and analyzed by the company’s engineers, on its own servers. The portal is designed for use by doctors and nurses, and eventually perhaps patients themselves, though some Google staffers would have access sooner. 

Google executives and some health systems say that detailed data sharing has the potential to improve health outcomes. Large troves of data help fuel algorithms Google is creating to detect lung cancer, eye disease and kidney injuries. Hospital executives have long sought better electronic record systems to reduce error rates and cut down on paperwork….

Legally, the information gathered by Google can be used for purposes beyond diagnosing illnesses, under laws enacted during the dial-up era. U.S. federal privacy laws make it possible for health-care providers, with little or no input from patients, to share data with certain outside companies. That applies to partners, like Google, with significant presences outside health care. The company says its intentions in health are unconnected with its advertising business, which depends largely on data it has collected on users of its many services, including email and maps.

Medical information is perhaps the last bounty of personal data yet to be scooped up by technology companies. The health data-gathering efforts of other tech giants such as Amazon and International Business Machines Corp. face skepticism from physician and patient advocates. But Google’s push in particular has set off alarm bells in the industry, including over privacy concerns. U.S. senators, as well as health-industry executives, are questioning Google’s expansion and its potential for commercializing personal data….(More)”.

Global Fishing Watch: Pooling Data and Expertise to Combat Illegal Fishing

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Data Collaborative Case Study by Michelle Winowatan, Andrew Young, and Stefaan Verhulst: “

Global Fishing Watch, originally set up through a collaboration between Oceana, SkyTruth and Google, is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing responsible stewardship of our oceans through increased transparency in fishing activity and scientific research. Using big data processing and machine learning, Global Fishing Watch visualizes, tracks, and shares data about global fishing activity in near-real time and for free via their public map. To date, the platform tracks approximately 65,000 commercial fishing vessels globally. These insights have been used in a number of academic publications, ocean advocacy efforts, and law enforcement activities.

Data Collaborative Model: Based on the typology of data collaborative practice areas, Global Fishing Watch is an example of the data pooling model of data collaboration, specifically a public data pool. Public data pools co-mingle data assets from multiple data holders — including governments and companies — and make those shared assets available on the web. This approach enabled the data stewards and stakeholders involved in Global Fishing Watch to bring together multiple data streams from both public- and private-sector entities in a single location. This single point of access provides the public and relevant authorities with user-friendly access to actionable, previously fragmented data that can drive efforts to address compliance in fisheries and illegal fishing around the world.

Data Stewardship Approach: Global Fishing Watch also provides a clear illustration of the importance of data stewards. For instance, representatives from Google Earth Outreach, one of the data holders, played an important stewardship role in seeking to connect and coordinate with SkyTruth and Oceana, two important nonprofit environmental actors who were working separately prior to this initiative. The brokering of this partnership helped to bring relevant data assets from the public and private sectors to bear in support of institutional efforts to address the stubborn challenge of illegal fishing.

Read the full case study here.”