Report by Andrew Zahuranec, Andrew Young and Stefaan G. Verhulst: “Around the world, public leaders are seeking new ways to better understand the needs of their citizens, and subsequently improve governance, and how we solve public problems. The approaches proposed toward changing public engagement tend to focus on leveraging two innovations. The first involves artificial intelligence (AI), which offers unprecedented abilities to quickly process vast quantities of data to deepen insights into public needs. The second is collective intelligence (CI), which provides means for tapping into the “wisdom of the crowd.” Both have strengths and weaknesses, but little is... (More >)
Capturing citizen voice online: Enabling smart participatory local government
Tooran Alizadeh, Somwrita Sarkar and Sandy Burgoyne in Cities: “Social media and online communication have changed the way citizens engage in all aspects of lives from shopping and education, to how communities are planned and developed. It is no longer one-way or two- way communication. Instead, via networked all-to-all communication channels, our citizens engage on urban issues in a complex and more connected way than ever before. So government needs new ways to listen to its citizens. The paper comprises three components. Firstly, we build on the growing discussions in the literature focused on smart cities, on one hand,... (More >)
Understanding our Political Nature: How to put knowledge and reason at the heart of political decision-making
EU report by Rene Van Bavel et al: “Recognising that advances in behavioural, decision and social sciences demonstrate that we are not purely rational beings, this report brings new insights into our political behaviour and this understanding have the potential to address some of the current crises in our democracies. Sixty experts from across the globe working in the fields of behavioural and social sciences as well as the humanities, have contributed to the research that underpins this JRC report that calls upon evidence-informed policymaking not to be taken for granted. There is a chapter dedicated to each key... (More >)
From Hippocrates to Artificial Intelligence: Moving Towards a Collective Intelligence
Carlos María Galmarini at Open Mind: “Modern medicine is based upon the work of Hippocrates and his disciples and is compiled in more than 70 books comprising the Hippocratic body of work. In its essence, these writings declare that any illness originates with natural causes. Therefore, medicine must be based on detailed observation, reason, and experience in order to establish a diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. The Hippocratic tradition stresses the importance of the symptoms and the clinical exam. As a result, medicine abandoned superstition and the magic performed by priest-doctors, and it was transformed into a real, experience-based science….... (More >)
Crosscope
“Crosscope is revolutionizing the way practitioners and researchers are leveraging digital pathology to share and solve medical cases. Since the 1900s cancer diagnosis has been limited to the subjective interpretation of what the pathologist could see under a microscope. To transform the way we perform pathology and cancer research, we are developing new tools to leverage powerful AI & perspectives of medical experts at the same time. At Crosscope, we are building a place for the convergence of collective intelligence of our massive online medical community and AI. We are commited to developing cutting edge AI tools for better... (More >)
Number of fact-checking outlets surges to 188 in more than 60 countries
Mark Stencel at Poynter: “The number of fact-checking outlets around the world has grown to 188 in more than 60 countries amid global concerns about the spread of misinformation, according to the latest tally by the Duke Reporters’ Lab. Since the last annual fact-checking census in February 2018, we’ve added 39 more outlets that actively assess claims from politicians and social media, a 26% increase. The new total is also more than four times the 44 fact-checkers we counted when we launched our global database and map in 2014. Globally, the largest growth came in Asia, which went from... (More >)
The European Lead Factory: Collective intelligence and cooperation to improve patients’ lives
Press Release: “While researchers from small and medium-sized companies and academic institutions often have enormous numbers of ideas, they don’t always have enough time or resources to develop them all. As a result, many ideas get left behind because companies and academics typically have to focus on narrow areas of research. This is known as the “Innovation Gap”. ESCulab (European Screening Centre: unique library for attractive biology) aims to turn this problem into an opportunity by creating a comprehensive library of high-quality compounds. This will serve as a basis for testing potential research targets against a wide variety of... (More >)
The 100 Questions Initiative: Sourcing 100 questions on key societal challenges that can be answered by data insights
Press Release: “The Governance Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering announced the launch of the 100 Questions Initiative — an effort to identify the most important societal questions whose answers can be found in data and data science if the power of data collaboratives is harnessed. The initiative, launched with initial support from Schmidt Futures, seeks to address challenges on numerous topics, including migration, climate change, poverty, and the future of work. For each of these areas and more, the initiative will seek to identify questions that could help unlock the potential of data and data science... (More >)
Living Labs As A Collaborative Framework For Changing Perceptions And Goals
Co-Val: “In the… ‘Report on cross-country comparison on existing innovation and living labs’, Lars Fuglsang and Anne Vorre Hansen from Roskilde University describe various applications of living labs to decision-making. The basic two examples are living labs as a collaborative framework for changing perceptions and goals and living labs as an ecosystem for policy innovation. Living labs can involve a change in mindset and goals as expressed in one paper on public sector innovation labs (Carstensen & Bason, 2012). Carstensen and Bason (2012) report the important story of the Danish Mindlab (2002-2018) – a cross-governmental innovation lab involving public... (More >)
Echo Chambers May Not Be as Dangerous as You Think, New Study Finds
News Release: “In the wake of the 2016 American presidential election, western media outlets have become almost obsessed with echo chambers. With headlines like “Echo Chambers are Dangerous” and “Are You in a Social Media Echo Chamber?,” news media consumers have been inundated by articles discussing the problems with spending most of one’s time around likeminded people. But are social bubbles really all that bad? Perhaps not. A new study from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, published today in the Proceedings of... (More >)
