DATA – Page 326 – The Living Library

UN Opens New Office to Monitor AI Development and Predict Possible Threats

Curated on October 2, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Interesting Engineering: “The United Nations has created a new office in the Netherlands dedicated to the monitoring and research of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The new office will collect information about the way in which AI is impacting the world. Researchers will have a particular focus on the way AI relates to global security but will also monitor the effects of job loss from AI and automation.

Irakli Beridze, a UN senior strategic adviser will head the office. They have described the new office saying, “A number of UN organisations operate projects involving robots and AI, such as the group of experts studying the role of autonomous military robots in the realm of conventional weapons. These are temporary measures. Ours is the first permanent UN office on this subject. We are looking at the risks as well as the advantages.”….He suggests that the speed of AI technology development is of primary concern. He explains, “This can make for instability if society does not adapt quickly enough. One of our most important tasks is to set up a network of experts from business, knowledge institutes, civil society organisations and governments. We certainly do not want to plead for a ban or a brake on technologies. We will also explore how new technology can contribute to the sustainable development goals of the UN. For this, we want to start concrete projects. We will not be a talking club.”…(More).

New program wants to improve cities with the power of tweets and Flickr uploads

Curated on October 1, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Marissa Clifford at Curbed: “Want to watch street life unfold outside of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, long after it’s closed for the day? Or uncover the hidden ways both tourists and locals alike use Manhattan’s most famous landmarks? Now you can, all thanks to the power of data.

Urban Pulse, open-source software developed at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, uses data to create a map that visualizes how people move through cities. From Urban Pulse’s interface, you can observe, for example, how tourists navigate Central Park.

Sociologists Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, who worked in the early years of the 20th century, developed a theory of urban environments that used the human body as an organizing analogy: They likened the mundane processes of everyday urban life (things like phone calls and taxi rides) to the heartbeat. Urban Pulse brings that analogy into the 21st century, replacing statistics about phone calls with social media and other digital data.

Essentially, Urban Pulse is a dynamic, comparative heat map. And the hot spots on the map are made up of what the research team dubbed “pulses” and “beats,” terminology that was inspired by Park and Burgess’s original analogy.

But Urban Pulse’s findings don’t simply reinforce what we already know about cities. By pinpointing how, when, and by whom city spaces are most often used, the data has the power to upend our preconceptions about civic space. This has potentially far-reaching implications for urban planners, architects, and city planners.

But what is a “pulse?” And where is that social media data coming from? Simply put, a pulse is a graphic representation of the kinds of open source data that serve as proxies for human activity, like tweets and Flickr uploads. Though Urban Pulse currently only uses data from Flickr and Twitter, it is free to download on GitHub, and its creators are hoping to see a wider variety of data types input by the open source community….(More)”.

Are countries with a poor democratic record more likely to mandate an Aadhaar-like ID?

Curated on September 30, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan at the Centre for Communication Governance: “Can a country’s democratic record indicate whether it is likely to mandate a national biometric identity? Research by scholars at the National Law University, Delhi suggests there may be some correlation, at least to indicate that robust democracies have been more cautious about adopting biometric identity systems.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding a fundamental Right to Privacy for all Indians has put a renewed focus on Aadhaar, India’s 12-digit biometric identity programme that has been criticised for not only violating privacy but also lacking sufficient data protection safeguards. Challenges to the Aadhaar project, in fact, prompted the Supreme Court to take up the question of a Right to Privacy, and the apex court will hear petitions against the unique identity initiative later this year.

Ahead of those hearings, researchers from the Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University, Delhi sought to look at the adoption of biometric identity systems by countries across the world. While examining whether countries were instituting these Aadhaar-like systems, researchers from the Centre noticed a trend wherein nations with strong biometric identity systems were less likely to have robust democratic governments.

“As we gathered and analysed the data, we noticed an interesting trend where many countries that had strong biometric ID systems, also did not have strong democratic governments,” the researchers said.

So they sought to map out their research, based on data collected primarily from countries within the Commonwealth, measured against their positions on Freedom House’s Freedom in the World index and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy index. The results show a cluster of nations with less freedoms also instituting a biometric system, while others higher up the democracy index do not have similar identity programmes….(More)”.

Polish activists turn to digital democracy

Curated on September 28, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Zosia Wasik in the Financial Times: “Opponents of the Polish government have mounted a series of protests on issues ranging from reform of the judiciary to an attempt to ban abortion. In February, they staged yet another, less public but intensely emotive, battle — to save the country’s trees.

At the beginning of the year, a new law allowed property owners to cut trees on their land without official permission. As a result, hundreds of trees disappeared from the centres of Polish cities as more valuable treeless plots were sold off to developers. In parallel, the government authorised extensive logging of the ancient forest in Bialowieza, a Unesco world heritage site.

“People reacted very emotionally to these practices,” says Wojciech Sanko, a co-ordinator at Code for Poland, a programme run by ePanstwo (eState), the country’s biggest non-governmental organisation in this field.

The group aims to deploy new technology tools designed to explain local and national policies, and to make it easier for citizens to take part in public life. As no one controlled the tree-cutting, for example, Mr Sanko thought technology could at least help to monitor it. First, he wanted to set up a simple digital map of trees cut in Warsaw. But as the controversial liberalisation of tree-cutting was reversed, the NGO together with local activists decided to work on another project — to map trees still standing, along with data about species and their absorption of carbon dioxide associated with climate change.

The group has also started to create an app for activists in Bialowieza forest: an open-source map that will gather all documentation from civic patrols monitoring the site, and will indicate the exact places of logging.

A trend towards recruiting technology for civic projects has been slowly gathering pace in a country that is hard to describe as socially-engaged: only 59 per cent of Poles say they have done volunteer work for the community, according to a 2016 survey by the Centre of Public Opinion Research.

Election turnout barely surpasses 50 per cent. Yet since the election of the rightwing Law and Justice government in 2015, which has introduced rapid and controversial reforms across all domains of public life, citizens have started to take a closer look at politicians and their actions.

In addition to the tree map, Code for Poland has developed a website that aggregates public data, such as tax spending or air pollution.

Mr Sanko underlines, however, that Code for Poland is much more about local communities than national politics. Many of the group’s projects are small scale, ranging from a mobile app for an animal shelter in Gdansk and a tool that shows people where they can take their garbage.

Piotr Micula, board member of Miasto Jest Nasze (The City is Ours), an urban movement in Warsaw, says that increasing access to data is fuelling the development of civic tech. “Even as a small organisation, we try to use big data and visualise it,” he says….(More)”.

Blockchain-like ID may mean end of paper birth certificates

Curated on September 28, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chris Baraniuk at New Scientist: “There’s a new way to prove you are who you say you are – inspired by the tech underpinning bitcoin. Usually, when you need to verify your identity, the process is archaic, insecure and time-consuming. You get a copy of your birth certificate in the post, put it in an envelope and hope it gets to whoever is asking for it. In the digital era, this should take seconds.

But putting something as sensitive as a birth certificate online risks identity theft in the era of hacks and leaks. Now, the US state of Illinois is experimenting with a secure way of putting control of that data into its citizens’ hands, with the help of distributed ledgers, similar to the blockchain used by bitcoin.

Just last month, Illinois announced a pilot project to create “secure ‘self-sovereign’ identity” for Illinois citizens wishing to access their birth certificate. The idea is to use a blockchain-like distributed ledger that allows online access only to the people owning the ID, and any third parties granted their permission.

Illinois is working with software firm Evernym of Herriman, Utah, to create a record of who should be able to access data from the state’s birth register. Once this is done, no central authority should be required, just your say-so.They’re not the only ones. According to a report by Garrick Hileman and Michael Rauchs at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, UK, governments are increasingly experimenting with it, including the UK and Brazil.

Activists have long called for people to have greater control of their data. Hacks and leaks are making it too risky for authorities to be the central repository of citizens’ most vital information.

With distributed ledgers, all participants within a network can have their own identical copy of data like access permissions – so no one can view cryptographically sealed birth certificate data unless they’re meant to. Blockchains are a type of distributed ledger that gets the whole network to observe and verify transactions – such as when someone sends a bitcoin to their friend….(More)”.

Cape Town as a Smart and Safe City: Implications for Governance and Data Privacy

Curated on September 28, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nora Ni Loideain at the Journal of International Data Privacy Law: “Promises abound that ‘smart city’ technologies could play a major role in developing safer, more sustainable, and equitable cities, creating paragons of democracy. However, there are concerns that governance led by ‘Big Data’ processes marks the beginning of a trend of encroachment on the individual’s liberty and privacy, even if such technologies are employed legitimately for the public’s safety and security. There are many ways in which personal data processing for law enforcement and public safety purposes may pose a threat to the privacy and data protection rights of individuals. Furthermore, the risk of such powers being misused is increased by the covert nature of the processing, and the ever-increasing capacity, and pervasiveness, of the retention, sharing, and monitoring of personal data by public authorities and business. The focus of this article concerns the use of these smart city technologies for the purposes of countering crime and ensuring public safety. Specifically, this research examines these policy-making developments, and the key initiatives to date, undertaken by the municipal authorities within the city of Cape Town. Subsequently, the examination then explores the implications of these policies and initiatives for governance, and compliance with the right to data privacy, as guaranteed under international human rights law, the Constitution of South Africa, and the national statutory framework governing data protection. In conclusion, the discussion provides reflections on the findings from this analysis, including some policy recommendations….(More)”.

Smart cities are great. Human-centric cities are (again) the future

Curated on September 27, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Naveen Rajdev at Quartz:” …You don’t want your smart city’s proverbial slip to show, and you don’t want to overwhelm your citizens with too much tech. So what’s the plan?

1. Start making technology invisible

Being able to “see” technology creates interaction, and interaction creates distraction.

To illustrate: Assuming your car and smartphone are connected, your phone should be able to notify someone—someone texting you, for example—that you’re driving and can’t respond. You don’t want to take your hands off the wheel, so your phone should instead be able to send an automatic response to the text sender: “I’m driving right now, but I’ll get back to you later.” It keeps you and others safe on the road, and it doesn’t force you to respond….

Detroit, for instance, is already investigating the idea of “invisible” technology, particularly when it comes to residents’ safety. Last fall, Detroit’s city officials partnered with Comcast to expand the area’s Project Green Light program, which allows businesses to install cameras police can use to monitor crimes (and solve them) in real time.

The program’s expansion led to a 50% drop in violent crime at convenience stores and gas stations. Thanks to the technology—which was by no means a distraction to Detroit’s residents—the city is safer, and business is better.

While Detroit excels at making tech inconspicuous, most of the country is doing what it can to be more on-the-grid than ever before, completely ignoring (or altogether missing) the subtleties “invisible” tech offers. Last fall, New York City officials introduced LinkNYC, a free Wi-Fi service throughout Manhattan in the form of 500 touch-screen kiosks available for public use.

As the adage suggests, sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. With the kiosks being essentially too visible in Manhattan’s streets, problems arose: The city’s homeless population began misusing them, and certain groups started insisting the kiosks help officials “spy” on its residents….

2. Your city must be conscious of digital overload

In a world where technology rules, it’s imperative we find time to think, breathe, and unplug, so city leaders must carefully marry tech and mindfulness. Otherwise, they face the consequences of information overload: weakened decision-making and the feeling of being overwhelmed, among others. A city’s occasional digital detox is crucial.

Why? Studies have shown that smartphones could be causing insomnia, social media may be spawning narcissism, and computer screens might be making our kids less empathetic. At some point, a line must be drawn.

Luckily, certain cities are starting to draw it. Late last year, Miami’s development authority department proposed turning lanes clogged with traffic on Biscayne Boulevard into a spacious greenway that welcomed both pedestrians and bicyclists. Beyond that, walking trails are growing along the river and bay, and another trail is in the works. City developers have also approved smaller residential projects in areas that public transit serves….

Even a simple art exhibit can be marred by too much tech. …Other gallery curators aren’t loving the marriage of art and tech. Connie Wolf, Stanford University’s director of the Cantor Arts Center, is particularly cautious. “In our busy lives, in our crazy lives, we’re always connected to technology,” she said. “People want to come into museums and put that technology aside for a moment.”

Bottom line: Being connected is great, but being conscious is better. City leaders would do well to remember this….(More)”.

Are robots taking our jobs?

Curated on September 27, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Hasan Bakhshi et al at Nesta: “In recent years, there has been an explosion of research into the impacts of automation on work. This makes sense: artificial intelligence and robotics are encroaching on areas of human activity that were simply unimaginable a few years ago.

We ourselves have made contributions to this debate (here, here and here). In The Future of Skills, however, we argue that public dialogues that consider automation alone are dangerous and misleading.

They are dangerous, because popular narratives matter for economic outcomes, and a narrative of relentless technological displacement of labour markets risks chilling innovation and growth, at a time when productivity growth is flagging in developed countries.

They are misleading because there are opportunities for boosting growth – if our education and training systems are agile enough to respond appropriately. However, while there is a burgeoning field of research on the automatability of occupations, there is far less that focuses on skills, and even less that generates actionable insights for stakeholders in areas like job redesign and learning priorities.

There is also a need to recognise that parallel to automation is a set of broader technological, demographic, economic and environmental trends which will have profound implications for employment. In some cases, the trends will reinforce one another; in others, they will produce second-order effects which may be missed when viewed in isolation…..

Skills investment must be at the centre of any long-term strategy for adjusting to structural change. A precondition is access to good quality, transparent analysis of future skills needs, as without it, labour market participants and policymakers risk flying blind. The approach we’ve developed is a step towards improving our understanding of this vital agenda and one that invites a more pro-active reaction than the defensive one that has characterised public discussions on automation in recent years. We’d love to hear your comments….(More).”

The role of eGovernment in deepening the single market

Curated on September 26, 2017October 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Briefing by the European Parliamentary Research Service: “This briefing recognises the role of cross-border and cross-sector use of electronic identification (eID) and trust services in advancing the digitisation of public services in Europe as well as the potential impact of the implementation of the ‘once-only’ principle in public administrations. The eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 includes several concrete actions to help boost the Digital Single Market, underpinned by the ‘digital-by-default, ‘once-only’ and ‘cross-border by default’ principles. The publication comes at a relevant time, when Member States are preparing for a ministerial meeting and to sign a Ministerial Declaration (on eGovernment) early next month….The role of eGovernment in deepening the single market briefing is available and accesible through the link….(More)”.