DATA – Page 343 – The Living Library

We hold people with power to account. Why not algorithms?

Curated on September 19, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Hannah Fry at the Guardian: “…But already in our hospitals, our schools, our shops, our courtrooms and our police stations, artificial intelligence is silently working behind the scenes, feeding on our data and making decisions on our behalf. Sure, this technology has the capacity for enormous social good – it can help us diagnose breast cancer, catch serial killers, avoid plane crashes and, as the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has proposed, potentially save lives using NHS data and genomics. Unless we know when to trust our own instincts over the output of a piece of software, however, it also brings the potential for disruption, injustice and unfairness.

If we permit flawed machines to make life-changing decisions on our behalf – by allowing them to pinpoint a murder suspect, to diagnose a condition or take over the wheel of a car – we have to think carefully about what happens when things go wrong…

I think it’s time we started treating machines as we would any other source of power. I would like to propose a system of regulation for algorithms, and perhaps a good place to start would be with Tony Benn’s five simple questions, designed for powerful people, but equally applicable to modern AI:

“What power have you got?
“Where did you get it from?
“In whose interests do you use it?
“To whom are you accountable?
“How do we get rid of you?”
Because, ultimately, we can’t just think of algorithms in isolation. We have to think of the failings of the people who design them – and the danger to those they are supposedly designed to serve.

Is Mass Surveillance the Future of Conservation?

Curated on September 18, 2018October 24, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Mallory Picket at Slate: “The high seas are probably the most lawless place left on Earth. They’re a portal back in time to the way the world looked for most of our history: fierce and open competition for resources and contested territories. Pirating continues to be a way to make a living.

It’s not a complete free-for-all—most countries require registration of fishing vessels and enforce environmental protocols. Cooperative agreements between countries oversee fisheries in international waters. But the best data available suggests that around 20 percent of the global seafood catch is illegal. This is an environmental hazard because unregistered boats evade regulations meant to protect marine life. And it’s an economic problem for fishermen who can’t compete with boats that don’t pay for licenses or follow the (often expensive) regulations. In many developing countries, local fishermen are outfished by foreign vessels coming into their territory and stealing their stock….

But Henri Weimerskirch, a French ecologist, has a cheap, low-impact way to monitor thousands of square miles a day in real time: He’s getting birds to do it (a project first reported by Hakai). Specifically, albatross, which have a 10-foot wingspan and can fly around the world in 46 days. The birds naturally congregate around fishing boats, hoping for an easy meal, so Weimerskirch is equipping them with GPS loggers that also have radar detection to pick up the ship’s radar (and make sure it is a ship, not an island) and a transmitter to send that data to authorities in real time. If it works, this should help in two ways: It will provide some information on the extent of the unofficial fishing operation in the area, and because the logger will transmit their information in real time, the data will be used to notify French navy ships in the area to check out suspicious boats.

His team is getting ready to deploy about 80 birds in the south Indian Ocean this November.
The loggers attached around the birds’ legs are about the shape and size of a Snickers. The south Indian Ocean is a shared fishing zone, and nine countries, including France (courtesy of several small islands it claims ownership of, a vestige of colonialism), manage it together. But there are big problems with illegal fishing in the area, especially of the Patagonian toothfish (better known to consumers as Chilean seabass)….(More)”

Building block(chain)s for a better planet

Curated on September 18, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

PWC report: “…Our research and analysis identified more than 65 existing and emerging blockchain use cases for the environment through desk-based research and interviews with a range of stakeholders at the forefront of applying blockchain across industry, big tech, entrepreneurs, research and government. Blockchain use-case solutions that are particularly relevant across environmental applications tend to cluster around the following cross-cutting themes: enabling the transition to cleaner and more efficient decentralized systems; peer-to-peer trading of resources or permits; supply-chain transparency and management; new financing models for environmental outcomes; and the realization of non-financial value and natural capital. The report also identifies enormous potential to create blockchain-enabled “game changers” that have the ability to deliver transformative solutions to environmental challenges. These game changers have the potential to disrupt, or substantially optimize, the systems that are critical to addressing many environmental challenges. A high-level summary of those game changers is outlined below:

“See-through” supply chains: blockchain can create undeniable (and potentially unavoidable) transparency in supply chains. …
Decentralized and sustainable resource management: blockchain can underpin a transition to decentralized utility systems at scale…
Raising the trillions – new sources of sustainable finance: blockchain-enabled finance platforms could potentially revolutionize access to capital and unlock potential for new investors in projects that address environmental challenges – from retail-level investment in green infrastructure projects through to enabling blended finance or charitable donations for developing countries. …
Incentivizing circular economies: blockchain could fundamentally change the way in which materials and natural resources are valued and traded, incentivizing individuals, companies and governments to unlock financial value from things that are currently wasted, discarded or treated as economically invaluable. …
Transforming carbon (and other environmental) markets: blockchain platforms could be harnessed to use cryptographic tokens with a tradable value to optimize existing market platforms for carbon (or other substances) and create new opportunities for carbon credit transactions.
Next-gen sustainability monitoring, reporting and verification: blockchain has the potential to transform both sustainability reporting and assurance, helping companies manage, demonstrate and improve their performance, while enabling consumers and investors to make better-informed decisions. …
Automatic disaster preparedness and humanitarian relief: blockchain could underpin a new shared system for multiple parties involved in disaster preparedness and relief to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, coordination and trust of resources. An interoperable decentralized system could enable the sharing of information (e.g. individual relief activities transparent to all other parties within the distributed network) and rapid automated transactions via smart contracts. ..
Earth-management platforms: new blockchainenabled geospatial platforms, which enable a range of value-based transactions, are in the early stages of exploration and could monitor, manage and enable market mechanisms that protect the global environmental commons – from life on land to ocean health. Such applications are further away in terms of technical and logistical feasibility, but they remain exciting to contemplate….(More)”.

To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good

Curated on September 17, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Social Science Research Council: “For decades, the social sciences have generated knowledge vital to guiding public policy, informing business, and understanding and improving the human condition. But today, the social sciences face serious threats. From dwindling federal funding to public mistrust in institutions to widespread skepticism about data, the infrastructure supporting the social sciences is shifting in ways that threaten to undercut research and knowledge production.

How can we secure social knowledge for future generations?

This question has guided the Social Science Research Council’s Task Force. Following eighteen months of consultation with key players as well as internal deliberation, we have identified both long-term developments and present threats that have created challenges for the social sciences, but also created unique opportunities. And we have generated recommendations to address these issues.

Our core finding focuses on the urgent need for new partnerships and collaborations among several key players: the federal government, academic institutions, donor organizations, and the private sector. Several decades ago, these institutions had clear zones of responsibility in producing social knowledge, with the federal government constituting the largest portion of funding for basic research. Today, private companies represent an increasingly large share not just of research and funding, but also the production of data that informs the social sciences, from smart phone usage to social media patterns.

In addition, today’s social scientists face unprecedented demands for accountability, speedy publication, and generation of novel results. These pressures have emerged from the fragmented institutional foundation that undergirds research. That foundation needs a redesign in order for the social sciences to continue helping our communities address problems ranging from income inequality to education reform.

To build a better future, we identify five areas of action: Funding, Data, Ethics, Research Quality, and Research Training. In each area, our recommendations range from enlarging corporate-academic pilot programs to improving social science training in digital literacy.

A consistent theme is that none of the measures, if taken unilaterally, can generate optimal outcomes. Instead, we have issued a call to forge a new research compact to harness the potential of the social sciences for improving human lives. That compact depends on partnerships, and we urge the key players in the construction of social science knowledge—including universities, government, foundations, and corporations—to act swiftly. With the right realignments, the security of social knowledge lies within our reach….(More)”

Swarm AI Outperforms in Stanford Medical Study

Curated on September 16, 2018December 11, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Stanford University School of Medicine and Unanimous AI presented a new study today showing that a small group of doctors, connected by intelligence algorithms that enable them to work together as a “hive mind,” could achieve higher diagnostic accuracy than the individual doctors or machine learning algorithms alone. The technology used is called Swarm AI and it empowers networked human groups to combine their individual insights in real-time, using AI algorithms to converge on optimal solutions.

As presented at the 2018 SIIM Conference on Machine Intelligence in Medical Imaging, the study tasked a group of experienced radiologists with diagnosing the presence of pneumonia in chest X-rays. This is one of the most widely performed imaging procedures in the US, with more than 1 million adults hospitalized with pneumonia each year. But, despite this prevalence, accurately diagnosing X-rays is highly challenging with significant variability across radiologists. This makes it both an optimal task for applying new AI technologies, and an important problem to solve for the medical community.

When generating diagnoses using Swarm AI technology, the average error rate was reduced by 33% compared to traditional diagnoses by individual practitioners. This is an exciting result, showing the potential of AI technologies to amplify the accuracy of human practitioners while maintaining their direct participation in the diagnostic process.

Swarm AI technology was also compared to the state-of-the-art in automated diagnosis using software algorithms that do not employ human practitioners. Currently, the best system in the world for the automated diagnosing of pneumonia from chest X-rays is the CheXNet system from Stanford University, which made headlines in 2017 by significantly outperforming individual practitioners using deep-learning derived algorithms.

The Swarm AI system, which combines real-time human insights with AI technology, was 22% more accurate in binary classification than the software-only CheXNet system. In other words, by connecting a group of radiologists into a medical “hive mind”, the hybrid human-machine system was able to outperform individual human doctors as well as the state-of-the-art in deep-learning derived algorithms….(More)”.

Rohingya turn to blockchain to solve identity crisis

Curated on September 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Skot Thayer and Alex Hern at the Guardian: “Rohingya refugees are turning to blockchain-type technology to help address one of their most existential threats: lack of officially-recognised identity.

Denied citizenship in their home country of Myanmar for decades, the Muslim minority was the target of a brutal campaign of violence by the military which culminated a year ago this week. A “clearance operation” led by Buddhist militia sent more than 700,000 Rohingya pouring over the border into Bangladesh, without passports or official ID.

The Myanmar government has since agreed to take the Rohingya back, but are refusing to grant them citizenship. Many Rohingya do not want to return and face life without a home or an identity. This growing crisis prompted Muhammad Noor and his team at the Rohingya Project to try to find a digital solution.

“Why does a centralised entity like a bank or government own my identity,” says Noor, a Rohingya community leader based in Kuala Lumpur. “Who are they to say if I am who I am?”

Using blockchain-based technology, Noor, is trialling the use of digital identity cards that aim to help Rohingya in Malaysia, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia access services such as banking and education. The hope is that successful trials might lead to a system that can help the community across southeast Asia.

Under the scheme, a blockchain database is used to record individual digital IDs, which can then be issued to people once they have taken a test to verify that they are genuine Rohingya….

Blockchain-based initiatives, such as the Rohingya Project, could eventually allow people to build the network of relationships necessary to participate in the modern global economy and prevent second and third generation “invisible” people from slipping into poverty. It could also allow refugees to send money across borders, bypassing high transaction fees.

In Jordan’s Azraq refugee camp, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is using blockchain and biometrics to help Syrian refugees to purchase groceries using a voucher system. This use of the technology allows the WFP to bypass bank fees.

But Al Rjula says privacy is still an issue. “The technology is maturing, yet implementation by startups and emerging tech companies is still lacking,” he says.

The involvement of a trendy technology such as blockchains can often be enough to secure the funding, attention and support that start-ups – whether for-profit or charitable – need to thrive. But companies such as Tykn still have to tackle plenty of the same issues as their old-fashioned database-using counterparts, from convincing governments and NGOs to use their services in the first place to working out how to make enough overhead to pay staff, while also dealing with the fickle issues of building on a cutting-edge platform.

Blockchain-based humanitarian initiatives will also need to reckon with the problem of accountability in their efforts to aid refugees and those trapped in the limbo of statelessness.

Dilek Genc, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who studies blockchain-type applications in humanitarian aid and development, saysif the aid community continues to push innovation using Silicon Valley’s creed of “fail fast and often,” and experiment on vulnerable peoples they will be fundamentally at odds with humanitarian principles and fail to address the political roots of issues facing refugees…(More)”.

Don’t forget people in the use of big data for development

Curated on September 15, 2018November 13, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Joshua Blumenstock at Nature: “Today, 95% of the global population has mobile-phone coverage, and the number of people who own a phone is rising fast (see ‘Dialling up’)¹. Phones generate troves of personal data on billions of people, including those who live on a few dollars a day. So aid organizations, researchers and private companies are looking at ways in which this ‘data revolution’ could transform international development.

Some businesses are starting to make their data and tools available to those trying to solve humanitarian problems. The Earth-imaging company Planet in San Francisco, California, for example, makes its high-resolution satellite pictures freely available after natural disasters so that researchers and aid organizations can coordinate relief efforts. Meanwhile, organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations are recruiting teams of data scientists to apply their skills in statistics and machine learning to challenges in international development.

But in the rush to find technological solutions to complex global problems there’s a danger of researchers and others being distracted by the technology and losing track of the key hardships and constraints that are unique to each local context. Designing data-enabled applications that work in the real world will require a slower approach that pays much more attention to the people behind the numbers…(More)”.

Safe artificial intelligence requires cultural intelligence

Curated on September 13, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Gillian Hadfield at TechCrunch: “Knowledge, to paraphrase British journalist Miles Kington, is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing there’s a norm against putting it in a fruit salad.

Any kind of artificial intelligence clearly needs to possess great knowledge. But if we are going to deploy AI agents widely in society at large — on our highways, in our nursing homes and schools, in our businesses and governments — we will need machines to be wise as well as smart.

Researchers who focus on a problem known as AI safety or AI alignment define artificial intelligence as machines that can meet or beat human performance at a specific cognitive task. Today’s self-driving cars and facial recognition algorithms fall into this narrow type of AI.

But some researchers are working to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) — machines that can outperform humans at any cognitive task. We don’t know yet when or even if AGI will be achieved, but it’s clear that the research path is leading to ever more powerful and autonomous AI systems performing more and more tasks in our economies and societies.

Building machines that can perform any cognitive task means figuring out how to build AI that can not only learn about things like the biology of tomatoes but also about our highly variable and changing systems of norms about things like what we do with tomatoes.

Humans live lives populated by a multitude of norms, from how we eat, dress and speak to how we share information, treat one another and pursue our goals.

For AI to be truly powerful will require machines to comprehend that norms can vary tremendously from group to group, making them seem unnecessary, yet it can be critical to follow them in a given community.

Tomatoes in fruit salads may seem odd to the Brits for whom Kington was writing, but they are perfectly fine if you are cooking for Koreans or a member of the culinary avant-garde. And while it may seem minor, serving them the wrong way to a particular guest can cause confusion, disgust, even anger. That’s not a recipe for healthy future relationships….(More)”.