Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Sandra Matz: “There are more pieces of digital data than there are stars in the universe. This data helps us monitor our planet, decipher our genetic code, and take a deep dive into our psychology.

As algorithms become increasingly adept at accessing the human mind, they also become more and more powerful at controlling it, enticing us to buy a certain product or vote for a certain political candidate. Some of us say this technological trend is no big deal. Others consider it one of the greatest threats to humanity. But what if the truth is more nuanced and mind-bending than that?

In Mindmasters, Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet big data also holds enormous potential to help us live healthier, happier lives—for example, by improving our mental health, encouraging better financial decisions, or enabling us to break out of our echo chambers..(More)”.

What’s the Goal of the Goal?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Dan Heath: “…Achieving clarity on the way forward is not an incremental victory. It is transformative. It can mean the difference between stuck and unstuck.

A group of federal government leaders experienced this transformation several years ago when they rethought the goal of a program that served people with disabilities, including veterans. Some context: Anyone with a “total permanent disability” can, by law, have their federal student loans discharged. But thousands of veterans didn’t take advantage of the program. This was a disappointment to many government leaders, whose goal was simple: Make it easy for veterans to apply for the benefits they deserve.

What was holding back participation in the program? To some extent it was knowledge: Many simply didn’t realize they were eligible for forgiveness. Others got derailed by the cumbersome application process.

The stakes were high: Some of these borrowers were actually in default—potentially having their social-security-disability payments garnished to make loan payments. The government was reaching into their pockets to claim money for loans that they shouldn’t have owed!

So what could be done? In 2016, a team at the Department of Education thought: Rather than make the borrowers responsible for discovering this benefit, let’s proactively tell them about it!

They hatched a plan that led them to compare the databases at several agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). The Department of Education database could tell you: Who has student loans? The VA database could tell you: Which veterans are permanently disabled? Anyone who matched both databases was eligible for a loan discharge…(More)”

Impact Curious?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Excerpt of book by Priya Parrish: “My journey to impact investing began when I was an undergraduate studying economics and entrepreneurship and couldn’t find any examples of people harnessing the power of business to improve the world. That was 20 years ago, before impact investing was a recognized strategy. Back then, just about everyone in the field was an entrepreneur experimenting with investment tools, trying to figure out how to do well financially while also making positive change. I joined right in.

The term “impact investing” has been around since 2007 but hasn’t taken hold the way I thought (and hoped) it might. There are still a lot of myths about what impact investing truly is and does, the most prevalent of which is that doing good won’t generate returns. This couldn’t be more false, yet it persists. This book is my attempt to debunk this myth and others like it, as well as make sense of the confusion, as it’s difficult for a newcomer to understand the jargon, sort through the many false or exaggerated claims, and follow the heated debates about this topic. This book is for the “impact curious,” or anyone who wants more than just financial returns from their investments. It is for anyone interested in finding out what their investments can do when aligned with purpose. It is for anyone who wishes to live in alignment with their values—in every aspect of their lives.

This particular excerpt from my book, The Little Book of Impact Investing, provides a history of the term and activity in the space. It addresses why now is a particularly good time to make business do more and do better—so that the world can and will too…(More)”.

You Be the Judge: How Taobao Crowdsourced Its Courts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Excerpt from Lizhi Liu’s new book, “From Click to Boom”: “When disputes occur, Taobao encourages buyers and sellers to negotiate with each other first. If the feuding parties cannot reach an agreement and do not want to go to court, they can use one of Taobao’s two judicial channels: asking a Taobao employee to adjudicate or using an online jury panel to arbitrate. This section discusses the second channel, a unique Chinese institutional innovation.

Alibaba’s Public Jury was established in 2012 to crowdsource justice. It uses a Western-style jury-voting mechanism to solve online disputes and controversial issues. These jurors are termed “public assessors” by Taobao. Interestingly, the name “public assessor” was drawn from the Chinese talent show “Super Girl” (similar to “American Idol”), which, after the authority shut down its mass voting system, transitioned to using a small panel of audience representatives (or “public assessors”) to vote for the show’s winner. The public jury was widely used by the main Taobao site by 2020 and is now frequently used by Xianyu, Taobao’s used-goods market.

Why did Taobao introduce the jury system? Certainly, as Taobao expanded, the volume of online disputes surged, posing challenges for the platform to handle all disputes by itself. However, according to a former platform employee responsible for designing this institution, the primary motivation was not the caseload. Instead, it was propelled by the complexity of online disputes that proved challenging for the platform to resolve alone. Consequently, they opted to involve users in adjudicating these cases to ensure a fairer process rather than solely relying on platform intervention.

To form a jury, Taobao randomly chooses each panel of 13 jurors from 4 million volunteer candidates; each juror may participate in up to 40 cases per day. The candidate needs to be an experienced Taobao user (i.e., those who have registered for more than a year) with a good online reputation (i.e., those who have a sufficiently high credit rating, as discussed below). This requirement is high enough to prevent most dishonest traders from manipulating votes, but low enough to be inclusive and keep the juror pool large. These jurors are unpaid yet motivated to participate. They gain experience points that can translate into different virtual titles or that can be donated to charity by Taobao as real money…(More)”

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Nicholas Carr: “From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.

A celebrated writer on the human consequences of technology, Nicholas Carr reorients the conversation around modern communication, challenging some of our most cherished beliefs about self-expression, free speech, and media democratization. He reveals how messaging apps strip nuance from conversation, how “digital crowding” erodes empathy and triggers aggression, how online political debates narrow our minds and distort our perceptions, and how advances in AI are further blurring the already hazy line between fantasy and reality.

Even as Carr shows how tech companies and their tools of connection have failed us, he forces us to confront inconvenient truths about our own nature. The human psyche, it turns out, is profoundly ill-suited to the “superbloom” of information that technology has unleashed.

With rich psychological insights and vivid examples drawn from history and science, Superbloom provides both a panoramic view of how media shapes society and an intimate examination of the fate of the self in a time of radical dislocation. It may be too late to change the system, Carr counsels, but it’s not too late to change ourselves…(More)”.

How and When to Involve Crowds in Scientific Research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Marion K. Poetz and Henry Sauermann: “This book explores how millions of people can significantly contribute to scientific research with their effort and experience, even if they are not working at scientific institutions and may not have formal scientific training. 

Drawing on a strong foundation of scholarship on crowd involvement, this book helps researchers recognize and understand the benefits and challenges of crowd involvement across key stages of the scientific process. Designed as a practical toolkit, it enables scientists to critically assess the potential of crowd participation, determine when it can be most effective, and implement it to achieve meaningful scientific and societal outcomes.

The book also discusses how recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) shape the role of crowds in scientific research and can enhance the effectiveness of crowd science projects…(More)”

Local Government and Citizen Co-production Through Neighborhood Associations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Kohei Suzuki: “This chapter explores co-production practices of local governments, focusing on the role of neighborhood associations (NHAs) in Japan. This chapter investigates the overall research question of this book: how to enhance government performance under resource constraints, by focusing on the concept of citizen co-production. Historically, NHAs have played a significant role in supplementing municipal service provisions as co-producers for local governments. Despite the rich history of NHAs and their contributions to public service delivery at the municipal level, theoretical and empirical studies on NHAs and co-production practices remain limited. This chapter aims to address this research gap by exploring the following research questions: What are NHAs from a perspective of citizen co-production? What are the potential contributions of studying NHAs to the broader theory of co-production? What are the future research agendas? The chapter provides an overview of the origin and evolution of the co-production concept. It then examines the main characteristics and activities of NHAs and discusses their roles in supplementing local public service provision. Finally, the chapter proposes potential research agendas to advance studies on co-production using Japan as a case study…(More)”.

The Access to Public Information: A Fundamental Right

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Alejandra Soriano Diaz: “Information is not only a human-fundamental right, but it has been shaped as a pillar for the exercise of other human rights around the world. It is the path for bringing to account authorities and other powerful actors before the people, who are, for all purposes, the actual owners of public data.

Providing information about public decisions that have the potential to significantly impact a community is vital to modern democracy. This book explores the forms in which individuals and collectives are able to voice their opinions and participate in public decision-making when long-lasting effects are at stake, on present and future generations. The strong correlation between the right to access public information and the enjoyment of civil and political rights, as well as economic and environmental rights, emphasizes their interdependence.

This study raises a number of important questions to mobilize towards openness and empowerment of people’s right of ownership of their public information…(More)”.

Digital Governance: Confronting the Challenges Posed by Artificial Intelligence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Kostina Prifti, Esra Demir, Julia Krämer, Klaus Heine, and Evert Stamhuis: “This book explores the structure and frameworks of digital governance, focusing on various regulatory patterns, with the aim of tackling the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Addressing the various challenges posed by AI technologies, this book explores potential avenues for crafting legal remedies and solutions, spanning liability of AI, platform governance, and the implications for data protection and privacy…(More)”.

Anticipatory Governance: Shaping a Responsible Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Melodena Stephens, Raed Awamleh and Frederic Sicre: “Anticipatory Governance is the systemic process of future shaping built on the understanding that the future is not a continuation of the past or present, thus making foresight a complex task requiring the engagement of the whole of government with its constituents in a constructive and iterative manner to achieve collective intelligence. Effective anticipatory governance amplifies the fundamental properties of agile government to build trust, challenge assumptions, and reach consensus. Moreover, anticipatory governance sets the foundation to adapt to exponential change. This seismic shift in the governance environment should lead to urgent rethinking of the ways and means governments and large corporate players formulate strategies, design processes, develop human capital and shape instiutional culture to achieve public value.

From a long-term multigenerational perspective, anticipatory governance is a key component to ensure guardrails for the future. Systems thinking is needed to harness our collective intelligence, by tapping into knowledge trapped within nations, organizations, and people. Many of the wicked problems governments and corporations are grappling with like artificial intelligence applications and ethics, climate change, refugee migration, education for future skills, and health care for all, require a “system of systems”, or anticipatory governance.

Yet, no matter how much we invest in foresight and shaping the future, we still need an agile government approach to manage unintended outcomes and people’s expectations. Crisis management which begins with listening to weak signals, sensemaking, intelligence management, reputation enhancement, and public value alignment and delivery, is critical. This book dives into the theory and practice of anticipatory governance and sets the agenda for future research…(More)”