Report by Connected by Data: “This report explores how global citizen deliberation, particularly drawing on the concept of a global citizens’ assembly, could and should shape the future of artificial intelligence. Drawing on an extended design lab of in-depth interviews and workshops that took place in mid-2024, it presents a series of options for bringing the voices of those affected by AI development and deployment into decision-making spaces, through processes that can deliver informed and inclusive dialogue… In this report we address how established and emerging sites of global AI development and governance can integrate citizen deliberation, setting out five template options for citizens’ assemblies on AI: deliberative review of AI summits and scientific reports; an independent global assembly on AI; a series of distributed dialogues organized across the globe; a technology-enabled collective intelligence process; and commissioning the inclusion of AI topics in other deliberative processes…(More)”.
Reviving the commons: A scoping review of urban and digital commoning
Report by James Henderson and Oliver Escobar: “The review aims to contribute to the growing discourse on the commons, highlighting its significance in contemporary societies and its potential as an alternative to traditional forms of socioeconomic and political organisation via the state and/or the market. Practitioners in the field argue that we are witnessing a revival of the commons in the 21st century. This report interrogates the nature of that revival and explores key concepts, examples, trends and debates in theory and practice, while outlining an emerging research agenda…(More)”.
Leadership as Stewardship
Book by Marian Iszatt-White: “Exploring different understandings of stewardship across a range of research domains and cultures, this insightful book examines the tensions between competing perspectives and their implications for leadership. Marian Iszatt-White proposes ‘leadership-as-stewardship’ as a new signifier for leadership research, providing practical guidance to leaders navigating the challenges and trade-offs of the Anthropocene.
Leadership as Stewardship identifies how the apparent inadequacy of modern leadership coincides with a shift in scholarship away from practical inquiry and towards a range of aspirational approaches, including authentic, sustainable, responsible and ethical. Iszatt-White proposes stewardship as an alternative to these aspirational forms of leadership and challenges the ability of Western, Enlightenment-based thinking to solve global issues created by that same thinking. The book concludes that it is time to place the more enact-able construct of stewardship at the heart of leadership aspirations and scholarly activities.
Interdisciplinary in scope, this book will be vital for scholars of leadership, management and organization studies. Highlighting the ability of stewardship to combat perceived failings in leadership as both a construct and a practice, it is also valuable to policymakers, management educators and leadership practitioners…(More)”.
Artificial Intelligence for the Internal Democracy of Political Parties
Paper by Claudio Novelli et al: “The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to partial data collection, rare updates, and significant resource demands. To address these issues, the article suggests that specific data management and Machine Learning techniques, such as natural language processing and sentiment analysis, can improve the measurement and practice of IPD…(More)”.
Toward a citizen science framework for public policy evaluation
Paper by Giovanni Esposito et al: “This study pioneers the use of citizen science in evaluating Freedom of Information laws, with a focus on Belgium, where since its 1994 enactment, Freedom of Information’s effectiveness has remained largely unexamined. Utilizing participatory methods, it engages citizens in assessing transparency policies, significantly contributing to public policy evaluation methodology. The research identifies regional differences in Freedom of Information implementation across Belgian municipalities, highlighting that larger municipalities handle requests more effectively, while administrations generally show reluctance to respond to requests from perceived knowledgeable individuals. This phenomenon reflects a broader European caution toward well-informed requesters. By integrating citizen science, this study not only advances our understanding of Freedom of Information law effectiveness in Belgium but also advocates for a more inclusive, collaborative approach to policy evaluation. It addresses the gap in researchers’ experience with citizen science, showcasing its vast potential to enhance participatory governance and policy evaluation…(More)”.
DAOs of Collective Intelligence? Unraveling the Complexity of Blockchain Governance in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
Paper by Mark C. Ballandies, Dino Carpentras, and Evangelos Pournaras: “Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have transformed organizational structures by shifting from traditional hierarchical control to decentralized approaches, leveraging blockchain and cryptoeconomics. Despite managing significant funds and building global networks, DAOs face challenges like declining participation, increasing centralization, and inabilities to adapt to changing environments, which stifle innovation. This paper explores DAOs as complex systems and applies complexity science to explain their inefficiencies. In particular, we discuss DAO challenges, their complex nature, and introduce the self-organization mechanisms of collective intelligence, digital democracy, and adaptation. By applying these mechansims to improve DAO design and construction, a practical design framework for DAOs is created. This contribution lays a foundation for future research at the intersection of complexity science and DAOs…(More)”.
AI has a democracy problem. Citizens’ assemblies can help.
Article by Jack Stilgoe: “…With AI, beneath all the hype, some companies know that they have a democracy problem. OpenAI admitted as much when they funded a program of pilot projects for what they called “Democratic Inputs to AI.” There have been some interesting efforts to involve the public in rethinking cutting-edge AI. A collaboration between Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s competitors, and the Collective Intelligence Project asked 1000 Americans to help shape what they called “Collective Constitutional AI.” They were asked to vote on statements such as “the AI should not be toxic” and “AI should be interesting,” and they were given the option of adding their own statements (one of the stranger statements reads “AI should not spread Marxist communistic ideology”). Anthropic used these inputs to tweak its “Claude” Large Language Model, which, when tested against standard AI benchmarks, seemed to help mitigate the model’s biases.
In using the word “constitutional,” Anthropic admits that, in making AI systems, they are doing politics by other means. We should welcome the attempt to open up. But, ultimately, these companies are interested in questions of design, not regulation. They would like there to be a societal consensus, a set of human values to which they can “align” their systems. Politics is rarely that neat…(More)”.
Children and Young People’s Participation in Climate Assemblies
Guide by KNOCA: “This guide draws on the experiences and advice of children, young people and adults involved in citizens’ assemblies that have taken place at national, city and community levels across nine countries, highlighting that:
- Involving children and young people can enrich the intergenerational legitimacy and impact of climate assemblies: adult assembly members are reminded of their responsibilities to younger and future generations, and children and young people feel listened to, valued and taken seriously.
- Involving children and young people has significant potential to strengthen the future of democracy and climate governance by enhancing democratic and climate literacy within education systems.
- Children and young people can and should be involved in climate assemblies in different ways. Most importantly, children and young people should be involved from the very beginning of the process to ensure it reflects children and young people’s own ideas.
- There are practical, ethical and design factors to consider when working with children and young people which can often be positively navigated by taking a child rights-based approach to the conceptualisation, design and delivery of climate assemblies…(More)”.
The Power of Supercitizens
Blog by Brian Klaas: “Lurking among us, there are a group of hidden heroes, people who routinely devote significant amounts of their time, energy, and talent to making our communities better. These are the devoted, do-gooding, elite one percent. Most, but not all, are volunteers.1 All are selfless altruists. They, the supercitizens, provide some of the stickiness in the social glue that holds us together.2
What if I told you that there’s this little trick you can do that makes your community stronger, helps other people, and makes you happier and live longer? Well, it exists, there’s ample evidence it works, and best of all, it’s free.
Recently published research showcases a convincing causal link between these supercitizens—devoted, regular volunteers—and social cohesion. While such an umbrella term means a million different things, these researchers focused on two UK-based surveys that analyzed three facets of social cohesion, measured through eight questions (respondents answered on a five point scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree). They were:
Neighboring
- ‘If I needed advice about something I could go to someone in my neighborhood’;
- ‘I borrow things and exchange favors with my neighbors’; and
- ‘I regularly stop and talk with people in my neighborhood’
Psychological sense of community
- ‘I feel like I belong to this neighborhood’;
- ‘The friendships and associations I have with other people in my neighborhood mean a lot to me’;
- ‘I would be willing to work together with others on something to improve my neighborhood’; and
- ‘I think of myself as similar to the people that live in this neighborhood’)
Attraction to the neighborhood
- ‘I plan to remain a resident of this neighborhood for a number of years’
While these questions only tap into some specific components of social cohesion, high levels of these ingredients are likely to produce a reliable recipe for a healthy local community. (Social cohesion differs from social capital, popularized by Robert Putnam and his book, Bowling Alone. Social capital tends to focus on links between individuals and groups—are you a joiner or more of a loner?—whereas cohesion refers to a more diffuse sense of community, belonging, and neighborliness)…(More)”.
The Power of Volunteers: Remote Mapping Gaza and Strategies in Conflict Areas
Blog by Jessica Pechmann: “…In Gaza, increased conflict since October 2023 has caused a prolonged humanitarian crisis. Understanding the impact of the conflict on buildings has been challenging, since pre-existing datasets from artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) models and OSM were not accurate enough to create a full building footprint baseline. The area’s buildings were too dense, and information on the ground was impossible to collect safely. In these hard-to-reach areas, HOT’s remote and crowdsourced mapping methodology was a good fit for collecting detailed information visible on aerial imagery.
In February 2024, after consultation with humanitarian and UN actors working in Gaza, HOT decided to create a pre-conflict dataset of all building footprints in the area in OSM. HOT’s community of OpenStreetMap volunteers did all the data work, coordinating through HOT’s Tasking Manager. The volunteers made meticulous edits to add missing data and to improve existing data. Due to protection and data quality concerns, only expert volunteer teams were assigned to map and validate the area. As in other areas that are hard to reach due to conflict, HOT balanced the data needs with responsible data practices based on the context.
Comparing AI/ML with human-verified OSM building datasets in conflict zones
AI/ML is becoming an increasingly common and quick way to obtain building footprints across large areas. Sources for automated building footprints range from worldwide datasets by Microsoft or Google to smaller-scale open community-managed tools such as HOT’s new application, fAIr.
Now that HOT volunteers have completely updated and validated all OSM buildings in visible imagery pre-conflict, OSM has 18% more individual buildings in the Gaza strip than Microsoft’s ML buildings dataset (estimated 330,079 buildings vs 280,112 buildings). However, in contexts where there has not been a coordinated update effort in OSM, the numbers may differ. For example, in Sudan where there has not been a large organized editing campaign, there are just under 1,500,000 in OSM, compared to over 5,820,000 buildings in Microsoft’s ML data. It is important to note that the ML datasets have not been human-verified and their accuracy is not known. Google Open Buildings has over 26 million building features in Sudan, but on visual inspection, many of these features are noise in the data that the model incorrectly identified as buildings in the uninhabited desert…(More)”.