The Technology/Jobs Puzzle: A European Perspective

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Lucía Bosoer and Andrea Renda as part of the work of the Markle Technology Policy and Research Consortium: “In recent years, the creation of “good jobs” – defined as occupations that provide a middle-class living standard, adequate benefits, sufficient economic security, personal autonomy, and career prospects (Rodrik and Sabel 2019; Rodrik and Stantcheva 2021) – has become imperative for many governments. At the same time, developments in industrial value chains and in digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) create important challenges for the creation of good jobs. On the one hand, future good jobs may not be found only in manufacturing, ad this requires that industrial policy increasingly looks at services. On the other hand, AI has shown the potential to automate both routine and also non-routine tasks (TTC 2022), and this poses new, important questions on what role humans will play in the industrial value chains of the future. In the report drafted for the Markle Technology Policy and Research Consortium on The Technology/Jobs Puzzle: A European Perspective, we analyze Europe’s approach to the creation of “good jobs”. By mapping Europe’s technological specialization, we estimate in which sectors good jobs are most likely to emerge, and assess the main opportunities and challenges Europe faces on the road to a resilient, sustainable and competitive future economy.The report features an important reflection on how to define job quality and, relatedly “good jobs”. From the perspective of the European Union, job quality can be defined along two distinct dimensions. First, while the internationally agreed definition is rather static (e.g. related to the current conditions of the worker), the emerging interpretation at the EU level incorporates the extent to which a given job leads to nurturing human capital, and thereby empowering workers with more skills and well-being over time. Second, job quality can be seen from a “micro” perspective, which only accounts for the condition of the individual worker; or from a more “macro” perspective, which considers whether the sector in which the job emerges is compatible with the EU’s agenda, and in particular with the twin (green and digital) transition. As a result, we argue that ideally, Europe should avoid creating “good” jobs in “bad” sectors, as well as “bad” jobs in “good” sectors. The ultimate goal is to create “good” jobs in “good” sectors….(More)”

The Rule of Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Cass R. Sunstein: “The concept of the rule of law is invoked for purposes that are both numerous and diverse, and that concept is often said to overlap with, or to require, an assortment of other practices and ideals, including democracy, free elections, free markets, property rights, and freedom of speech. It is best to understand the concept in a more specific way, with a commitment to seven principles: (1) clear, general, publicly accessible rules laid down in advance; (2) prospectivity rather than retroactivity; (3) conformity between law on the books and law in the world; (4) hearing rights; (5) some degree of separation between (a) law-making and law enforcement and (b) interpretation of law; (6) no unduly rapid changes in the law; and (7) no contradictions or palpable inconsistency in the law. This account of the rule of law conflicts with those offered by (among many others) Friedrich Hayek and Morton Horwitz, who conflate the idea with other, quite different ideas and practices. Of course it is true that the seven principles can be specified in different ways, broadly compatible with the goal of describing the rule of law as a distinct concept, and some of the seven principles might be understood to be more fundamental than others…(More)”.

The Real Opportunities for Empowering People through Behavioral Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Michael Hallsworth: “…There’s much to be gained by broadening out from designing choice architecture with little input from those who use it. But I think we need to change the way we talk about the options available.

Let’s start by noting that attention has focused on three opportunities in particular: nudge plus, self-nudges, and boosts.

Nudge plus is where a prompt to encourage reflection is built into the design and delivery of a nudge (or occurs close to it). People cannot avoid being made aware of the nudge and its purpose, enabling them to decide whether they approve of it or not. While some standard nudges, like commitment devices, already contain an element of self-reflection, a nudge plus must include an “active trigger.”

A self-nudge is where someone designs a nudge to influence their own behavior. In other words, they “structure their own decision environments” to make an outcome they desire more likely. An example might be creating a reminder to store snacks in less obvious and accessible places after they are bought.

Boosts emerge from the perspective that many of the heuristics we use to navigate our lives are useful and can be taught. A boost is when someone is helped to develop a skill, based on behavioral science, that will allow them to exercise their own agency and achieve their goals. Boosts aim at building people’s competences to influence their own behavior, whereas nudges try to alter the surrounding context and leave such competences unchanged.

When these ideas are discussed, there is often an underlying sense of “we need to move away from nudging and towards these approaches.” But to frame things this way neglects the crucial question of how empowerment actually happens.   

Right now, there is often a simplistic division between disempowering nudges on one side and enabling nudge plus/self-nudges/boosts on the other. In fact, these labels disguise two real drivers of empowerment that cut across the categories. They are:

  1. How far a person performing the behavior is involved in shaping the initiative itself. They could not be involved at all, involved in co-designing the intervention, or initiating and driving the intervention itself.
  2. The level and nature of any capacity created by the intervention. It may create none (i.e., have no cognitive or motivational effects), it may create awareness (i.e., the ability to reflect on what is happening), or it may build the ability to carry out an action (e.g., a skill).

The figure below shows how the different proposals map against these two drivers.

Source: Hallsworth, M. (2023). A Manifesto for Applying Behavioral Science.

A major point this figure calls attention to is co-design, which uses creative methods “to engage citizens, stakeholders and officials in an iterative process to respond to shared problems.” In other words, the people affected by an issue or change are involved as participants, rather than subjects. This involvement is intended to create more effective, tailored, and appropriate interventions that respond to a broader range of evidence…(More)”.

A case for democracy’s digital playground

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Petr Špecián: “Institutions are societies’ building blocks. Their role in shaping and channelling human potential is crucial. Yet the vast space of possible institutional designs remains largely unexplored…In the institutional landscape, there are plenty of alternative designs to explore. Some of them, such as replacing elected representation with sortition, look promising. But if they appear only faintly through the mist of uncertainty, their implementation would be an overly risky endeavour. We need more data to get a better idea of our options.lly.

To explore alternative designs for the institutional landscape, we first need more data. I propose testing new institutional designs in a ‘digital playground’ of democracy

Currently, the multitude of reform proposals overwhelms the modest capacities available for their empirical testing. Only those most prominent — such as deliberative democracy — command enough resources to enable serious examination.

And the stakes are momentous. What if a radical reform of the political institutions proves disastrous? Clever speculations combined with scant experimental evidence cannot dispel reasonable doubts.

This is where my proposal for democracy’s digital playground comes in….Democracy’s digital playground is an artificial world in which institutional mechanisms are tested and compete against each other.

In some ways, it resembles massive multiplayer online games that emulate many of the real world’s crucial features. These games encourage people to work together to overcome challenges, which then motivates them to create political institutions conducive to their efforts. They can also migrate between communities, revealing their preference for alternative modes of governance.

A ‘digital playground’ of democracy emulates real-world features. It encourages people to work together to overcome challenges, thus creating conducive political institutions

That said, digital game-worlds in their current form have limited use for democratic experimentation. Their institution-building tools are crude, since much of the cooperation and  conflict resolution  happens outside the game environment itself, through forums and chats. Nor do these communities accurately represent the diversity of populations in real-world democracies. Players are predominantly young males with ample free time. And the games’ commercial purpose hinders the researchers’ quest for knowledge, too.

But perhaps these digital worlds can be adapted. Compared with the current methods used to test institutional mechanisms, they offer many advantages. Transparency is one such: a human-designed world is less opaque than the natural world. Easy participation represents another: regardless of location or resources, diverse people may join the community.

However, most important of all is the opportunity to calibrate the digital worlds as an optimum risk environment…(More)”.

Design for a Better World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Don Norman: “The world is a mess. Our dire predicament, from collapsing social structures to the climate crisis, has been millennia in the making and can be traced back to the erroneous belief that the earth’s resources are infinite. The key to change, says Don Norman, is human behavior, covered in the book’s three major themes: meaning, sustainability, and humanity-centeredness. Emphasize quality of life, not monetary rewards; restructure how we live to better protect the environment; and focus on all of humanity. Design for a Better World presents an eye-opening diagnosis of where we’ve gone wrong and a clear prescription for making things better.

Norman proposes a new way of thinking, one that recognizes our place in a complex global system where even simple behaviors affect the entire world. He identifies the economic metrics that contribute to the harmful effects of commerce and manufacturing and proposes a recalibration of what we consider important in life. His experience as both a scientist and business executive gives him the perspective to show how to make these changes while maintaining a thriving economy. Let the change begin with this book before it’s too late…(More)”

Data in design: How big data and thick data inform design thinking projects

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Marzia Mortati, Stefano Magistretti , Cabirio Cautela, and Claudio Dell’Era: “Scholars and practitioners have recognized that making innovation happen today requires renewed approaches focused on agility, dynamicity, and other organizational capabilities that enable firms to cope with uncertainty and complexity. In turn, the literature has shown that design thinking is a useful methodology to cope with ill-defined and wicked problems. In this study, we address the question of the little-known role of different types of data in innovation projects characterized by ill-defined problems requiring creativity to be solved. Rooted in qualitative observation (thick data) and quantitative analyses (big data), we investigate the role of data in eight design thinking projects dealing with ill-defined and wicked problems. Our findings highlight the practical and theoretical implications of eight practices that differently make use of big and thick data, informing academics and practitioners on how different types of data are utilized in design thinking projects and the related principles and practices…(More)”.

The disarming simplicity of wicked problems: The biography of an idea

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Niraj Verma: “The idea of “wicked problems” indicates the intractability and dilemmatic nature of design and planning. At the same time, it also encourages the development of design methods and information systems. So how do designers, technologists, and administrators reconcile and respond to these competing ideas? Using William James’s “psychology of truth,” the paper answers this question by putting wicked problems in intellectual relief. It also suggests that as long as pluralism, diversity, and interdisciplinary thinking are in good currency, the idea of wicked problems will retain its popularity, appeal, and usefulness…(More)”.

Towards Responsible Quantum Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mauritz Kop et al: “The expected societal impact of quantum technologies (QT) urges us to proceed and innovate responsibly. This article proposes a conceptual framework for Responsible QT that seeks to integrate considerations about ethical, legal, social, and policy implications (ELSPI) into quantum R&D, while responding to the Responsible Research and Innovation dimensions of anticipation, inclusion, reflection and responsiveness. After examining what makes QT unique, we argue that quantum innovation should be guided by a methodological framework for Responsible QT, aimed at jointly safeguarding against risks by proactively addressing them, engaging stakeholders in the innovation process, and continue advancing QT (‘SEA’). We further suggest operationalizing the SEA-framework by establishing quantum-specific guiding principles. The impact of quantum computing on information security is used as a case study to illustrate (1) the need for a framework that guides Responsible QT, and (2) the usefulness of the SEA-framework for QT generally. Additionally, we examine how our proposed SEA-framework for responsible innovation can inform the emergent regulatory landscape affecting QT, and provide an outlook of how regulatory interventions for QT as base-layer technology could be designed, contextualized, and tailored to their exceptional nature in order to reduce the risk of unintended counterproductive effects of policy interventions.

Laying the groundwork for a responsible quantum ecosystem, the research community and other stakeholders are called upon to further develop the recommended guiding principles, and discuss their operationalization into best practices and real-world applications. Our proposed framework should be considered a starting point for these much needed, highly interdisciplinary efforts…(More)”.

Innovation in Real Places

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Dan Breznitz: “Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we’ve been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism.

But are there other models that don’t rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Breznitz proposes that communities instead focus on where they fit in the four stages in the global production process. Some are at the highest end, and that is where the Clevelands, Sheffields, and Baltimores are being pushed toward. But that is bad advice. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. As he stresses, all localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it. Leaders might think the answer lies in high-tech or high-end manufacturing, but more often than not, they’re wrong. Innovation in Real Places is an essential corrective to a mythology of innovation and growth that too many places have bought into in recent years. Best of all, it has the potential to prod local leaders into pursuing realistic and regionally appropriate models for growth and innovation…(More)”.

Prediction Fiction

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Madeline Ashby: “…This contributes to what my colleague Scott Smith calls “flat-pack futures”, or what the Canadian scholar Sun-ha Hong calls “technofutures”, which “preach revolutionary change while practicing a politics of inertia”. These visions of possible future realities possess a mass-market sameness. They look like what happens when you tell an AI image generator to draw the future: just a slurry of genuine human creativity machined into a fine paste. Drone delivery, driverless cars, blockchain this, alt-currency that, smart mirrors, smart everything,and not a speck of dirt or illness or poverty or protest anywhere. Bloodless, bland, boring, banal. It is like ordering your future from the kids’ menu.

When we cannot acknowledge how bad things are, we cannot imagine how to improve them. As with so many challenges, the first step is admitting there is a problem. But if you are isolated, ignored, or ridiculed at work or at home for acknowledging that problem, the problem becomes impossible to deal with. How we treat existential threats to the planet today is how doctors treated women’s cancers until the latter half of the 20th century: by refusing to tell the patient she was dying.

But the issue is not just toxic positivity. Remember those myths about the warnings that go unheeded? The moral of those stories is not that some people are doomed never to be listened to. The moral of those stories is that people in power do not want to hear how they might lose it. It is not that the predictions were wrong, but that they were simply not what people wanted to hear. To work in futures, you have to tell people things they don’t want to hear. And this is when it is useful to tell a story….(More)”