AI+1: Shaping Our Integrated Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report edited by the Rockefeller Foundation: “As we speak—and browse, and post photos, and move about—artificial intelligence is transforming the fabric of our lives. It is making life easier, better informed, healthier, more convenient. It also threatens to crimp our freedoms, worsen social disparities, and gives inordinate powers to unseen forces.

Both AI’s virtues and risks have been on vivid display during this moment of global turmoil, forcing a deeper conversation around its responsible use and, more importantly, the rules and regulations needed to harness its power for good.

This is a vastly complex subject, with no easy conclusions. With no roadmap, however, we risk creating more problems instead of solving meaningful ones.

Last fall The Rockefeller Foundation convened a unique group of thinkers and doers at its Bellagio Center in Italy to weigh one of the great challenges of our time: How to harness the powers of machine learning for social good and minimize its harms. The resulting AI + 1 report includes diverse perspectives from top technologists, philosophers, economists, and artists at a critical moment during the current Covid-19 pandemic.

The report’s authors present a mix of skepticism and hope centered on three themes:

  1. AI is more than a technology. It reflects the values in its system, suggesting that any ethical lapses simply mirror our own deficiencies. And yet, there’s hope: AI can also inspire us, augment us, and make us go deeper.
  2. AI’s goals need to be society’s goals. As opposed to the market-driven, profit-making ones that dominate its use today, applying AI responsibly is to use it to support systems that have human goals.
  3. We need a new rule-making system to guide its responsible development. Self-regulation simply isn’t enough. Cross-sector oversight must start with transparency and access to meaningful information, as well as an ability to expose harm.

AI itself is a slippery force, hard to pin down and define, much less regulate. We describe it using imprecise metaphors and deepen our understanding of it through nuanced conversation. This collection of essays provokes the kind of thoughtful consideration that will help us wrestle with AI’s complexity, develop a common language, create bridges between sectors and communities, and build practical solutions. We hope that you join us….(More)”.

Trust and its determinants: Evidence from the Trustlab experiment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Working Paper : This paper describes the results of an international initiative on trust (Trustlab) run in six OECD countries between November 2016 and November 2017 (France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Slovenia and the United States). Trustlab combines cutting-edge techniques drawn from behavioural science and experimental economics with an extensive survey on the policy and contextual determinants of trust in others and trust in institutions, administered to representative samples of participants.

The main results are as follows: 1) Self-reported measures of trust in institutions are validated experimentally, 2) Self-reported measures of trust in others capture a belief about trustworthiness (as well as altruistic preferences), whereas experimental measures rather capture willingness to cooperate and one’s own trustworthiness. Therefore, both measures are loosely related, and should be considered complementary rather than substitutes; 3) Perceptions of institutional performance strongly correlate with both trust in government and trust in others; 4) Perceived government integrity is the strongest determinant of trust in government; 5) In addition to indicators associated with social capital, such as neighbourhood connectedness and attitudes towards immigration, perceived satisfaction with public services, social preferences and expectations matter for trust in others; 6) There is a large scope for policy action, as an increase in all significant determinants of trust in government by one standard deviation may be conducive to an increase in trust by 30 to 60%….(More)”.

The AI Powered State: What can we learn from China’s approach to public sector innovation?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay collection edited by Nesta: “China is striding ahead of the rest of the world in terms of its investment in artificial intelligence (AI), rate of experimentation and adoption, and breadth of applications. In 2017, China announced its aim of becoming the world leader in AI technology by 2030. AI innovation is now a key national priority, with central and local government spending on AI estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

While Europe and the US are also following AI strategies designed to transform the public sector, there has been surprisingly little analysis of what practical lessons can be learnt from China’s use of AI in public services. Given China’s rapid progress in this area, it is important for the rest of the world to pay attention to developments in China if it wants to keep pace.

This essay collection finds that examining China’s experience of public sector innovation offers valuable insights for policymakers. Not everything is applicable to a western context – there are social, political and ethical concerns that arise from China’s use of new technologies in public services and governance – but there is still much that can be learned from its experience while also acknowledging what should be criticized and avoided….(More)”.

The European data market

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “It was the first European Data Market study (SMART 2013/0063) contracted by the European Commission in 2013 that made a first attempt to provide facts and figures on the size and trends of the EU data economy by developing a European data market monitoring tool.

The final report of the updated European Data Market (EDM) study (SMART 2016/0063) now presents in detail the results of the final round of measurement of the updated European Data Market Monitoring Tool contracted for the 2017-2020 period.

Designed along a modular structure, as a first pillar of the study, the European Data Market Monitoring Tool is built around a core set of quantitative indicators to provide a series of assessments of the emerging market of data at present, i.e. for the years 2018 through 2020, and with projections to 2025.

The key areas covered by the indicators measured in this report are:

  • The data professionals and the balance between demand and supply of data skills;
  • The data companies and their revenues;
  • The data user companies and their spending for data technologies;
  • The market of digital products and services (“Data market”);
  • The data economy and its impacts on the European economy.
  • Forecast scenarios of all the indicators, based on alternative market trajectories.

Additionally, as a second major work stream, the study also presents a series of descriptive stories providing a complementary view to the one offered by the Monitoring Tool (for example, “How Big Data is driving AI” or “The Secondary Use of Health Data and Data-driven Innovation in the European Healthcare Industry”), adding fresh, real-life information around the quantitative indicators. By focusing on specific issues and aspects of the data market, the stories offer an initial, indicative “catalogue” of good practices of what is happening in the data economy today in Europe and what is likely to affect the development of the EU data economy in the medium term.

Finally, as a third work stream of the study, a landscaping exercise on the EU data ecosystem was carried out together with some community building activities to bring stakeholders together from all segments of the data value chain. The map containing the results of the landscaping of the EU data economy as well as reports from the webinars organised by the study are available on the www.datalandscape.eu website….(More)”.

The Computermen

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Podcast Episode by Jill Lepore: “In 1966, just as the foundations of the Internet were being imagined, the federal government considered building a National Data Center. It would be a centralized federal facility to hold computer records from each federal agency, in the same way that the Library of Congress holds books and the National Archives holds manuscripts. Proponents argued that it would help regulate and compile the vast quantities of data the government was collecting. Quickly, though, fears about privacy, government conspiracies, and government ineptitude buried the idea. But now, that National Data Center looks like a missed opportunity to create rules about data and privacy before the Internet took off. And in the absence of government action, corporations have made those rules themselves….(More)”.

Improving Governance with Policy Evaluation

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OECD Report: “Policy evaluation is a critical element of good governance, as it promotes public accountability and contributes to citizens’ trust in government. Evaluation helps ensure that decisions are rooted in trustworthy evidence and deliver desired outcomes. Drawing on the first significant cross-country survey of policy evaluation practices covering 42 countries, this report offers a systemic analysis of the institutionalisation, quality and use of evaluation across countries and looks at how these three dimensions interrelate.

The report also covers cross-cutting aspects related to regulatory assessment and performance budgeting. The analysis illustrates the role and functions of key institutions within the executive, such as centres of government and ministries of finance. It also underlines the role of supreme audit institutions….(More)”.

Public understanding and perceptions of data practices: a review of existing research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Helen Kennedy, Susan Oman, Mark Taylor, Jo Bates & Robin Steedman: “The ubiquitous collection and use of digital data is said to have wide-ranging effects. As these practices expand, interest in how the public perceives them has begun to grow. Understanding public views of data
practices is considered to be important, to ensure that data works ‘for people and society’ (the mission of the Ada Lovelace Institute) and is ‘a force for good’ (an aim of the government Centre for Data Ethics and
Innovation)

To improve understanding of public views of data practices, we conducted a review of original empirical research into public perceptions of, attitudes toward and feelings about data practices. We use the term ‘data practices’ to refer to the systematic collection, analysis and sharing of data and the outcomes of these processes. The data at the centre of such practices is often personal data, and related research often focuses on this data. Our review also covered related phenomena such as AI and facial recognition.

We carried out a systematic search of online academic research databases and a manual search, that began with literature with which we were already familiar, and then snowballed out. Our review covered a broad
range of academic disciplines and grey literature – that is, literature produced by independent, civil society, third sector, governmental or commercial organisations or by academics for non-academic audiences. It focused on the past five years. We excluded a) literature about children’s understandings and perceptions of data practices because this is a specialist area beyond our remit, and b) literature focused on the health domain because high quality syntheses of literature focusing on this domain already exist. The grey literature we reviewed focused on the UK, whereas academic literature was international….(More)”.

Data4Covid19

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The GovLab: “Three months ago, COVID-19 brought much of the world to a halt. Faced with the unprecedented challenges brought by the virus, The GovLab put forth a Call for Action to develop the responsible data infrastructure needed to address the pandemic and other dynamic threats. With our partners, we initiated several projects to achieve the goals outlined in the call.

Today we are launching a new hub for The GovLab’s #Data4COVID19 efforts at data4covid19.org. This site brings together our efforts to implement the Call for Action including developing a governance framework, building capacity, establishing data stewardship and a network of data stewards, and engaging people.

You can also use the site to share your updates and efforts with The GovLab team or subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed….(More)’.

Are Citizens’ Assemblies the Answer to the Climate Crisis?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Judy Dempsey’s Strategic Europe: “Mathilde Bouyé associate at the Climate Program Of The World Resources Institute: “…the impact of citizens’ deliberation depends on the link to decisionmaking, which varies with each country’s democratic culture. The UK climate assembly informed powerful parliamentary committees, while the French government created a precedent by committing to send the Citizens’ Convention on Climate’s proposals for adoption “without any filter….”

Jan Eichhorn,  Research Director Of D|Part and Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at The University Of Edinburgh: “The climate crisis is so complex that no single action can be the answer to it. However, because of the complexity, formats that can connect otherwise distant actors meaningfully can play a very helpful role. Citizens’ assemblies fit that bill.

If well designed, such assemblies connect expertise with life realities, broaden the horizon of policymakers on what publics may be willing or even excited to consider, and enable publics to learn about options they did not know about. Rather than stoking divisions between people and businesses or between activists and state officials, they can foster common ground and create shared purpose, which is needed to combat comprehensive challenges like the climate crisis….”

Tim Hughes, Director of Involve: “…they are only one way in which people can be—and need to be—involved in decisionmaking. Underpinning citizens’ assemblies are the principles of participation—people being involved in the decisions that affect their lives—and deliberation—people sharing and testing ideas through inclusive and respectful conversations.

It is these principles that we need to build into decisionmaking at all levels of society in order to develop the ideas, energy, and ownership to answer the crisis.”

Mariann Őry,  Head Of The Foreign Desk And Senior Editor At Magyar Hírlap: “Citizens’ initiatives have proven to be effective in reaching a number of goals, but the pressure they can put on stakeholders is not always enough.

It’s not even the most reliable political force: remember that the enthusiasm and momentum of the climate protests has basically vanished since the start of the coronavirus crisis, as if people simply lost interest—though this is surely not the case. A difference can be made on the level of political leaders and, very importantly, on the level of the biggest actors of industry….(More)”.

Experts Predict More Digital Innovation by 2030 Aimed at Enhancing Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Emily A. Vogels, Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson at Pew Research: “A large share of experts and analysts worry that people’s technology use will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation in the coming decade. Yet they also foresee significant social and civic innovation between now and 2030 to try to address emerging issues.

In this new report, technology experts who shared serious concerns for democracy in a recent Pew Research Center canvassing weigh in with their views about the likely changes and reforms that might occur in the coming years.

Overall, 697 technology innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded to the following query:

Social and civic innovation and its impact on the new difficulties of the digital age: As the Industrial Revolution swept through societies, people eventually took steps to mitigate abuses and harms that emerged. For instance, new laws were enacted to make workplaces safer and protect children; standards were created for product safety and effectiveness; new kinds of organizations came into being to help workers (e.g., labor unions) and make urban life more meaningful (e.g., settlement houses, Boys/Girls Clubs); new educational institutions were created (e.g., trade schools); household roles in families were reconfigured.

Today’s “techlash” illuminates the issues that have surfaced in the digital era. We seek your insights as to whether and how reforms to ease these problems and others might unfold.

The question: Will significant social and civic innovation occur between now and 2030? By “social and civic innovation,” we mean the creation of things like new technology tools, legal protections, social norms, new or reconfigured groups and communities, educational efforts and other strategies to address digital-age challenges.

Some 84% of these respondents say there will be significant social and civic innovation between now and 2030, while 16% say there will not be significant social and civic innovation in the timeframe.

Asked a follow-up question about whether humans’ use of technology will lead to or prevent significant social and civic innovation, 69% of these expert respondents said they expect that technology use will help significantly mitigate problems, 20% predicted that technology use will effectively prevent significant mitigation of problems and 11% responded that it is likely that technology use will have no effect on social and civic innovation.

This is a nonscientific canvassing of experts, based on a non-random sample. The results represent only the opinions of individuals who responded to the query and are not projectable to any other population. The methodology underlying this canvassing is elaborated here. The bulk of this report covers these experts’ written answers explaining their responses.

Respondents in this canvassing sound three broad themes about the changing technology landscape and how it will impact citizens’ political and social activities.

First, they predict that overall connectivity between people and their devices will increase as more digital applications emerge that allow people to create, share and observe information. This trend could accelerate as people employ smart agents and bots to interact with other people or other people’s avatars. These experts say persistent and expanded human connectivity will affect the way people engage with each other as citizens and influence how they work to build groups aimed at impacting policy and politics. Some argue this will change the way people interact with democratic institutions….(More)”.