World-first data storage infrastructure solution built by Iwi Māori, for Iwi Māori

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Media release: “Te Kāhui Raraunga Charitable Trust (TKR) is on a mission to provide a data storage solution like no other in the pursuit of mana motuhake when it comes to data and the digital future. The concept of the network’s purpose is encapsulated in its name, Te Pā Tūwatawata.

And after six months of testing, the pilot phase has proven so successful, TKR expects Te Pā Tūwatawata to go live in early 2025.

The kaupapa involves the development of a distributed storage network to enable iwi, hapū and whānau Māori to collect, store, protect, access and control their own data.

Unlike other data storage solutions here and around the world, the servers used to connect the network will be based at the heart of where the data comes from – on marae, inside Māori organisations, or at other relevant iwi locations.

Three locations have been in the testing phase since late 2023, with the final network set to open with eight locations around the motu.

TKR Chairman, Rāhui Papa says the project is not only a world-first, but significantly embraces core concepts like kotahitanga – through sharing and scaling; and rangatiratanga – by giving iwi and hapū the power to control and make decisions over their own data.

“Iwi Māori Data sovereignty is at the heart of everything we do at TKR. As the world becomes more and more digital, we must adapt and be prepared to create our own infrastructure and empower our people with the know-how and skills to use it,” says Mr Papa.

Kirikowhai Mikaere, Lead Technician for the Data ILG and Te Kāhui Raraunga says traditionally, data centres are located in big warehouses, completely isolated from the source of the data and the people and whenua who have connection to it.

“With this kaupapa, we’re housing the data where it belongs, under the safe protection of the people that it means the most to. Additionally, with Te Pā Tūwatawata being located on-shore and owned by us, it meets the principles of Iwi Māori Data Sovereignty at the highest levels,” says Ms Mikaere…(More)”.

Handbook of Public Participation in Impact Assessment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Tanya Burdett and A. John Sinclair: “… provides a clear overview of how to achieve meaningful public participation in impact assessment (IA). It explores conceptual elements, including the democratic core of public participation in IA, as well as practical challenges, such as data sharing, with diverse perspectives from 39 leading academics and practitioners.

Critically examining how different engagement frameworks have evolved over time, this Handbook underlines the ways in which tokenistic approaches and wider planning and approvals structures challenge the implementation of meaningful public participation. Contributing authors discuss the impact of international agreements, legislation and regulatory regimes, and review commonly used professional association frameworks such as the International Association for Public Participation core values for practice. They demonstrate through case studies what meaningful public participation looks like in diverse regional contexts, addressing the intentions of being purposeful, inclusive, transformative and proactive. By emphasising the strength of community engagement, the Handbook argues that public participation in IA can contribute to enhanced democracy and sustainability for all…(More)”.

Using ChatGPT to Facilitate Truly Informed Medical Consent

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Fatima N. Mirza: “Informed consent is integral to the practice of medicine. Most informed consent documents are written at a reading level that surpasses the reading comprehension level of the average American. Large language models, a type of artificial intelligence (AI) with the ability to summarize and revise content, present a novel opportunity to make the language used in consent forms more accessible to the average American and thus, improve the quality of informed consent. In this study, we present the experience of the largest health care system in the state of Rhode Island in implementing AI to improve the readability of informed consent documents, highlighting one tangible application for emerging AI in the clinical setting…(More)”.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate Collective Intelligence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Róbert Bjarnason, Dane Gambrell and Joshua Lanthier-Welch: “In an era characterized by rapid societal changes and complex challenges, institutions’ traditional methods of problem-solving in the public sector are increasingly proving inadequate. In this study, we present an innovative and effective model for how institutions can use artificial intelligence to enable groups of people to generate effective solutions to urgent problems more efficiently. We describe a proven collective intelligence method, called Smarter Crowdsourcing, which is designed to channel the collective intelligence of those with expertise about a problem into actionable solutions through crowdsourcing. Then we introduce Policy Synth, an innovative toolkit which leverages AI to make the Smarter Crowdsourcing problem-solving approach both more scalable, more effective and more efficient. Policy Synth is crafted using a human-centric approach, recognizing that AI is a tool to enhance human intelligence and creativity, not replace it. Based on a real-world case study comparing the results of expert crowdsourcing alone with expert sourcing supported by Policy Synth AI agents, we conclude that Smarter Crowdsourcing with Policy Synth presents an effective model for integrating the collective wisdom of human experts and the computational power of AI to enhance and scale up public problem-solving processes.

The potential for artificial intelligence to enhance the performance of groups of people has been a topic of great interest among scholars of collective intelligence. Though many AI toolkits exist, they too often are not fitted to the needs of institutions and policymakers. While many existing approaches view AI as a tool to make crowdsourcing and deliberative processes better and more efficient, Policy Synth goes a step further, recognizing that AI can also be used to synthesize the findings from engagements together with research to develop evidence-based solutions and policies. This study contributes significantly to the fields of collective intelligence, public problem-solving, and AI. The study offers practical tools and insights for institutions looking to engage communities effectively in addressing urgent societal challenges…(More)”

The revolution shall not be automated: On the political possibilities of activism through data & AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Isadora Cruxên: “Every other day now, there are headlines about some kind of artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that is taking place. If you read the news or check social media regularly, you have probably come across these too: flashy pieces either trumpeting or warning against AI’s transformative potential. Some headlines promise that AI will fundamentally change how we work and learn or help us tackle critical challenges such as biodiversity conservation and climate change. Others question its intelligence, point to its embedded biases, and draw attention to its extractive labour record and high environmental costs.

Scrolling through these headlines, it is easy to feel like the ‘AI revolution’ is happening to us — or perhaps blowing past us at speed — while we are enticed to take the backseat and let AI-powered chat-boxes like ChatGPT do the work. But the reality is that we need to take the driver’s seat.

If we want to leverage this technology to advance social justice and confront the intersecting socio-ecological challenges before us, we need to stop simply wondering what the AI revolution will do to us and start thinking collectively about how we can produce data and AI models differently. As Mimi Ọnụọha and Mother Cyborg put it in A People’s Guide to AI, “the path to a fair future starts with the humans behind the machines, not the machines themselves.”

Sure, this might seem easier said than done. Most AI research and development is being driven by big tech corporations and start-ups. As Lauren Klein and Catherine D’Ignazio discuss in “Data Feminism for AI” (see “Further reading” at the end for all works cited), the results are models, tools, and platforms that are opaque to users, and that cater to the tech ambitions and profit motives of private actors, with broader societal needs and concerns becoming afterthoughts. There is excellent critical work that explores the extractive practices and unequal power relations that underpin AI production, including its relationship to processes of datafication, colonial data epistemologies, and surveillance capitalism (to link but a few). Interrogating, illuminating, and challenging these dynamics is paramount if we are to take the driver’s seat and find alternative paths…(More)”.

Societal interaction plans—A tool for enhancing societal engagement of strategic research in Finland

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Kirsi Pulkkinen, Timo Aarrevaara, Mikko Rask, and Markku Mattila: “…we investigate the practices and capacities that define successful societal interaction of research groups with stakeholders in mutually beneficial processes. We studied the Finnish Strategic Research Council’s (SRC) first funded projects through a dynamic governance lens. The aim of the paper is to explore how the societal interaction was designed and commenced at the onset of the projects in order to understand the logic through which the consortia expected broad impacts to occur. The Finnish SRC introduced a societal interaction plan (SIP) approach, which requires research consortia to consider societal interaction alongside research activities in a way that exceeds conventional research plans. Hence, the first SRC projects’ SIPs and the implemented activities and working logics discussed in the interviews provide a window into exploring how active societal interaction reflects the call for dynamic, sustainable practices and new capabilities to better link research to societal development. We found that the capacities of dynamic governance were implemented by integrating societal interaction into research, in particular through a ‘drizzling’ approach. In these emerging practices SIP designs function as platforms for the formation of communities of experts, rather than traditional project management models or mere communication tools. The research groups utilized the benefits of pooling academic knowledge and skills with other types of expertise for mutual gain. They embraced the limits of expertise and reached out to societal partners to truly broker knowledge, and exchange and develop capacities and perspectives to solve grand societal challenges…(More)”.

Inclusive by default: strategies for more inclusive participation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Luiza Jardim and Maria Lucien: “…The systemic challenges that marginalised groups face are pressing and require action. The global average age of parliamentarians is 53, highlighting a gap in youth representation. Young people already face challenges like poverty, lack of education, unemployment and multiple forms of discrimination. Additionally, some participatory formats are often unappealing to young people and pose a challenge for engaging them. Gender equity research highlights the underrepresentation of women at all levels of decision-making and governance. Despite recent improvements, gender parity in governance worldwide is still decades or even centuries away. Meanwhile, ongoing global conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza and elsewhere, as well as the impacts of a changing climate, have driven the recent increase in the number of forcibly displaced people to more than 100 million. The engagement of these individuals in decision-making can vary greatly depending on their specific circumstances and the nature of their displacement.

Participatory and deliberative democracy can have transformative impacts on historically marginalised communities but only if they are intentionally included in program design and implementation. To start with, it’s possible to reduce the barriers to participation, such as the cost and time of transport to the participation venue, or burdens imposed by social and cultural roles in society, like childcare. During the process, mindful and attentive facilitation can help balance power dynamics and encourage participation from traditionally excluded people. This is further strengthened if the facilitation team includes and trains members of priority communities in facilitation and session planning…(More)”.

Participation in the Age of Foundation Models

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Harini Suresh et al: “Growing interest and investment in the capabilities of foundation models has positioned such systems to impact a wide array of services, from banking to healthcare. Alongside these opportunities is the risk that these systems reify existing power imbalances and cause disproportionate harm to historically marginalized groups. The larger scale and domain-agnostic manner in which these models operate further heightens the stakes: any errors or harms are liable to reoccur across use cases. In AI & ML more broadly, participatory approaches hold promise to lend agency and decision-making power to marginalized stakeholders, leading to systems that better benefit justice through equitable and distributed governance. But existing approaches in participatory AI/ML are typically grounded in a specific application and set of relevant stakeholders, and it is not straightforward how to apply these lessons to the context of foundation models. Our paper aims to fill this gap.
First, we examine existing attempts at incorporating participation into foundation models. We highlight the tension between participation and scale, demonstrating that it is intractable for impacted communities to meaningfully shape a foundation model that is intended to be universally applicable. In response, we develop a blueprint for participatory foundation models that identifies more
local, application-oriented opportunities for meaningful participation. In addition to the “foundation” layer, our framework proposes the “subfloor” layer, in which stakeholders develop shared technical infrastructure, norms and governance for a grounded domain such as clinical care, journalism, or finance, and the “surface” (or application) layer, in which affected communities shape the use of a foundation model for a specific downstream task. The intermediate “subfloor” layer scopes the range of potential harms to consider, and affords communities more concrete avenues for deliberation and intervention. At the same time, it avoids duplicative effort by scaling input across relevant use cases. Through three case studies in clinical care, financial services, and journalism, we illustrate how this multi-layer model can create more meaningful opportunities for participation than solely intervening at the foundation layer…(More)”.

How this mental health care app is using generative AI to improve its chatbot

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview by Daniela Dib: “Andrea Campos struggled with depression for years before founding Yana, a mental health care app, in 2017. The app’s chatbot provides users emotional companionship in Spanish. Although she was reluctant at first, Campos began using generative artificial intelligence for the Yana chatbot after ChatGPT launched in 2022. Yana, which recently launched its English-language version, has 15 million users, and is available in Latin America and the U.S.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

How has your product evolved since you introduced generative AI to it?

At first, we didn’t use generative AI because we believed it was far from ready for mental health support. We designed and guardrailed our chatbot’s responses with decision trees. But when ChatGPT launched and we saw what it could do, it wasn’t a question of whether to use generative AI or not, but how soon — we’d fall behind otherwise. It’s been a challenge because everyone quickly began developing with generative AI, but our advantage was that, having operated our chatbot for a while, we had gathered over 2 billion data points that have been invaluable for our app’s fine-tuning. One thing is clear: It’s crucial to have a model tailored to the specific needs of our product…(More)”.

Little Communes Everywhere

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Review by Jay Caspian Kang: “…I was thinking about all this while I read “The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life,” a forthcoming book by the comparative-literature professor Kristin Ross. Ross—who has previously written about the Paris Commune of 1871 and France’s student uprising of May, 1968—focusses particularly on the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes, a thousand-acre commune created by French farmers and their allies in the late two-thousands, in an effort to block the construction of a new airport, which would have kicked many people off their own land. (The French government had designated the land a zone d’aménagement différé, or a “deferred development area”; the farmers kept the acronym but used it to mean zone à défendre, or “zone to defend.”) For a commune to work, Ross argues, one must have both a physical space to defend against an antagonist and an articulated vision for an alternative organization of human relationships and economy. The “commune form,” as she defines it, is a “political movement that is also the collective elaboration of a desired way of life—the means becoming the end.” Theory, in other words, needs to be put into practice, in an intimate and earnest setting, so that people can test out their ideas about living within the context of an actual place among actual people.

Ross identifies one of the motivating forces behind the creation of the ZAD as alienation, which was “less the loss of some human essence than it was the loss of possibilities: the sense of blockages and impasses brought on by the destruction and fragmentation of the social tissue by capitalism.” Drawing upon the work of the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, Ross refers to “the colonization of everyday life,” each part of our day becoming dominated by economic reasoning. This, she writes, dispossesses us of “our dignity, our social life, our time, the sense of mastery over our lives, the beauty and health of our lived environment, and of the very possibility of working together to invent our future collectively.” Under such conditions, the commune becomes the only alternative…

Physical spaces, whether pools or parks, can be reclaimed through collective action, in much the way that admissions policies at exclusive magnet schools can be protected by a small group of dedicated parents. Small, everyday victories are the only real cure for alienation. What else would work?…(More)”