We Have the Power to Destroy Ourselves Without the Wisdom to Ensure That We Don’t

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

EdgeCast by Toby Ord: “Lately, I’ve been asking myself questions about the future of humanity, not just about the next five years or even the next hundred years, but about everything humanity might be able to achieve in the time to come.

The past of humanity is about 200,000 years. That’s how long Homo sapiens have been around according to our current best guess (it might be a little bit longer). Maybe we should even include some of our other hominid ancestors and think about humanity somewhat more broadly. If we play our cards right, we could live hundreds of thousands of years more. In fact, there’s not much stopping us living millions of years. The typical species lives about a million years. Our 200,000 years so far would put us about in our adolescence, just old enough to be getting ourselves in trouble, but not wise enough to have thought through how we should act.

But a million years isn’t an upper bound for how long we could live. The horseshoe crab, for example, has lived for 450 million years so far. The Earth should remain habitable for at least that long. So, if we can survive as long as the horseshoe crab, we could have a future stretching millions of centuries from now. That’s millions of centuries of human progress, human achievement, and human flourishing. And if we could learn over that time how to reach out a little bit further into the cosmos to get to the planets around other stars, then we could have longer yet. If we went seven light-years at a time just making jumps of that distance, we could reach almost every star in the galaxy by continually spreading out from the new location. There are already plans in progress to send spacecraft these types of distances. If we could do that, the whole galaxy would open up to us….

Humanity is not a typical species. One of the things that most worries me is the way in which our technology might put us at risk. If we look back at the history of humanity these 2000 centuries, we see this initially gradual accumulation of knowledge and power. If you think back to the earliest humans, they weren’t that remarkable compared to the other species around them. An individual human is not that remarkable on the Savanna compared to a cheetah, or lion, or gazelle, but what set us apart was our ability to work together, to cooperate with other humans to form something greater than ourselves. It was teamwork, the ability to work together with those of us in the same tribe that let us expand to dozens of humans working together in cooperation. But much more important than that was our ability to cooperate across time, across the generations. By making small innovations and passing them on to our children, we were able to set a chain in motion wherein generations of people worked across time, slowly building up these innovations and technologies and accumulating power….(More)”.

Online collective intelligence course aims to improve responses to COVID-19 and other crises

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

PressRelease: “Working with 11 partner institutions around the world,  The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering today launches a massive open online course (MOOC) on “Collective Crisis Intelligence.” The course is free, open to anyone, and designed to help institutions improve disaster response through the use of data and volunteer participation. 

Thirteen modules have been created by leading global experts in major disasters such as the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008, the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in 2011, the Ebola crisis in 2014, the Zika outbreak in 2016, and the current coronavirus. The course is designed to help those responding to coronavirus make use of volunteerism. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic reaches unprecedented proportions and spreads to more than 150 countries on six continents, policymakers are struggling to answer questions such as “How do we predict how the virus will spread?,” “How do we help the elderly and the homebound?,” “How do we provide economic assistance to those affected by business closures?,” and more. 

In each mini-lecture, those who have learned how to mobilize groups of people online to manage in a crisis present the basic concepts and tools to learn, analyze, and implement a crowdsourced public response. Lectures include

  • Introduction: Why Collective Intelligence Matters in a Crisis
  • Defining Actionable Problems (led by Matt Andrews, Harvard Kennedy School)
  • Three Day Evidence Review (led by Peter Bragge, Monash University, Australia)
  • Priorities for Collective Intelligence (led by Geoff Mulgan, University College London) 
  • Smarter Crowdsourcing (led by Beth Simone Noveck, The GovLab)
  • Crowdfunding (led by Peter Baeck, Nesta, United Kingdom)
  • Secondary Fall Out (led by Azby Brown, Safecast, Japan)
  • Crowdsourcing Surveillance (led by Tolbert Nyenswah, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, United States/Liberia)
  • Crowdsourcing Data (led by Angela Oduor Lungati and Juliana Rotich, Ushahidi, Kenya)
  • Mobilizing a Network (led by Sean Bonner, Safecast, Japan)
  • Crowdsourcing Scientific Expertise (led by Ali Nouri, Federation of American Scientists)
  • Chatbots and Social Media Strategies for Crisis (led by Nashin Mahtani, PetaBencana.id, Indonesia)
  • Conclusion: Lessons Learned

The course explores such innovative uses of crowdsourcing as Safecast’s implementation of citizen science to gather information about environmental conditions after the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant; Ushahidi, an online platform in Kenya for crowdsourcing data for crisis relief, human rights advocacy, transparency, and accountability campaigns; and “Ask a Scientist,” an interactive tool developed by The GovLab with the Federation of American Scientists and the New Jersey Office of Innovation, in which a network of scientists answer citizens’ questions about COVID-19.

More information on the courses is available at https://covidcourse.thegovlab.org “

New Tool to Establish Responsible Data Collaboratives in the Time of COVID-19

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Announcement: “To address the COVID-19 pandemic and other dynamic threats, The GovLab has called for the development of a new data infrastructure and ecosystem. Establishing data collaboratives in a responsible manner often necessitates the creation of data sharing agreements and other legal documentation — a strain on time and capacity both for data holders and those who could use data in the public interest.

Today, to support the development of data collaboratives in a responsible and agile way, we are sharing a new tool that addresses the complexity in preparing a Data Sharing Agreement from Contracts for Data Collaboration (a joint initiative of SDSN-TReNDS, the World Economic Forum, The GovLab, and the University of Washington’s Information Risk Research Initiative). Providing a checklist to support organizations with reviewing, negotiating and preparing Data Sharing Arrangements, the intent is to strengthen stakeholder trust and help accelerate responsible data sharing arrangements given the urgency of the global pandemic.

(Please note that the check list is a tool for formulating and understanding legal issues, but we are not offering it as legal advice.)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE TOOL (More)”.

Combating COVID-19 with Data: What Role for National Statistical Systems?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “As part of its ongoing response to the COVID-19 crisis, PARIS21 released today a policy brief at the intersection of statistics and policy making to help inform the measures taken to address the pandemic.

cover

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought data to the centre of policy making and public attention. A diverse ecosystem of data producers, both private and public, report rates of infection, fatality and recovery on a daily basis. However, a proliferation of data, which is at times contradictory, can also lead to confusion and mistrust among data users.

Meanwhile, policymakers, development partners and citizens need to take quick, informed actions to design interventions that reach the most vulnerable and leave no one behind. As countries comply with lockdowns and other containment measures, national statistical systems (NSSs) face a dual effect of growing data demand and constrained supply. This in turn may squeeze NSSs beyond their institutional capacity.

At the same time, alternative data sources such as mobile phone or satellite data are in abundance. These data could potentially complement traditional sources such as censuses, surveys and administrative systems. However, with scant governance frameworks to scale and sustain their use, policy action is not yet based on a convergence of evidence.

This policy brief introduces a conceptual framework that describes the adverse effects of the crisis on NSSs in developing countries. Moreover, it suggests short and medium-term actions to mitigate the negative effects by:

1. Focusing data production on priority economic, social and demographic data.
2. Communicating proactively with citizens, academia, private sector and policy makers.
3. Positioning the NSO as advisor and knowledge bank for national governments.

NSSs contribute significantly to robust policy responses in a crisis. The brief thus calls on national statistical offices to assume a central role as coordinators of the NSSs and chart the way toward improved data ecosystem governance for informing policies during and after COVID-19….(More)”.

Open Covid Pledge

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pledge: “Immediate action is required to halt the COVID-19 Pandemic and treat those it has affected. It is a practical and moral imperative that every tool we have at our disposal be applied to develop and deploy technologies on a massive scale without impediment.

We therefore pledge to make our intellectual property available free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease.

We will implement this pledge through a license that details the terms and conditions under which our intellectual property is made available.

How to make the Pledge

The first step for organizations wishing to make the Pledge is to publicly commit to making intellectual property relevant to COVID-19 freely available, by:

  • Posting a public statement that the organization is making the Pledge, on their website. 
  • Issuing an official press release.

And then sending us a link to this statement, a point of contact in the organization, and, at the organization’s discretion, a copy of their logo to display on this site.

How to implement the Pledge

The next step for organizations who have made the Pledge is to implement it via a license detailing the terms and conditions under which their intellectual property is made available. There are three options for doing so:

  • Adopt the Open COVID License, created by our legal team for organizations that wish to implement the Pledge simply and immediately on terms shared by many other organizations.
  • Create a custom license that accomplished the intent of the Pledge.
  • Identify existing license(s) that accomplish the goals of the Pledge.

As with making the Pledge, send us links to the license or licenses, a point of contact in the organization, and, at the organization’s discretion, a copy of their logo to display on this site….(More)”.

A guide to healthy skepticism of artificial intelligence and coronavirus

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Alex Engler at Brookings: “The COVID-19 outbreak has spurred considerable news coverage about the ways artificial intelligence (AI) can combat the pandemic’s spread. Unfortunately, much of it has failed to be appropriately skeptical about the claims of AI’s value. Like many tools, AI has a role to play, but its effect on the outbreak is probably small. While this may change in the future, technologies like data reporting, telemedicine, and conventional diagnostic tools are currently far more impactful than AI.

Still, various news articles have dramatized the role AI is playing in the pandemic by overstating what tasks it can perform, inflating its effectiveness and scale, neglecting the level of human involvement, and being careless in consideration of related risks. In fact, the COVID-19 AI-hype has been diverse enough to cover the greatest hits of exaggerated claims around AI. And so, framed around examples from the COVID-19 outbreak, here are eight considerations for a skeptic’s approach to AI claims….(More)”.

Data Protection under SARS-CoV-2

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

GDPR Hub: “The sudden outbreak of cases of COVID-19-afflictions (“Corona-Virus”), which was declared a pandemic by the WHO affects data protection in various ways. Different data protection authorities published guidelines for employers and other parties involved in the processing of data related to the Corona-Virus (read more below).

The Corona-Virus has also given cause to the use of different technologies based on data collection and other data processing activities by the EU/EEA member states and private companies. These processing activities mostly focus on preventing and slowing the further spreading of the Corona-Virus and on monitoring the citizens’ abidance with governmental measures such as quarantine. Some of them are based on anonymous or anonymized data (like for statistics or movement patterns), but some proposals also revolved around personalized tracking.

At the moment, it is not easy to figure out, which processing activities are actually supposed to be conducted and which are only rumors. This page will therefore be adapted once certain processing activities have been confirmed. For now, this article does not assess the lawfulness of particular processing activities, but rather outlines the general conditions for data processing in connection with the Corona-Virus.

It must be noted that several activities – such as monitoring, if citizens comply with quarantine and stay indoors by watching at mobile phone locations – can be done without having to use personal data under Article 4(1) GDPR, if all necessary information can be derived from anonymised data. The GDPR does not apply to activities that only rely on anonymised data….(More)”.

Collective Intelligence at EU Level – Social and Democratic Dimensions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Nora Milotay and Gianluca Sgueo: “Humans are among the many living species capable of collaborative and imaginative thinking. While it is widely agreed among scholars that this capacity has contributed to making humans the dominant species, other crucial questions remain open to debate. Is it possible to encourage large groups of people to engage in collective thinking? Is it possible to coordinate citizens to find solutions to address global challenges? Some scholars claim that large groups of independent, motivated, and well-informed people can, collectively, make better decisions than isolated individuals can – what is known as ‘collective intelligence.’

The social dimension of collective intelligence mainly relates to social aspects of the economy and of innovation. It shows that a holistic approach to innovation – one that includes not only technological but also social aspects – can greatly contribute to the EU’s goal of promoting a just transition for everyone to a sustainable and green economy in the digital age. The EU has been taking concrete action to promote social innovation by supporting the development of its theory and practice. Mainly through funding programmes, it helps to seek new types of partners and build new capacity – and thus shape the future of local and national innovations aimed at societal needs.

The democratic dimension suggests that the power of the collective can be leveraged so as to improve public decision-making systems. Supported by technology, policy-makers can harness the ‘civic surplus’ of citizens – thus providing smarter solutions to regulatory challenges. This is particularly relevant at EU level in view of the planned Conference on the Future of Europe, aimed at engaging communities at large and making EU decision-making more inclusive and participatory.

The current coronavirus crisis is likely to change society and our economy in ways as yet too early to predict, but recovery after the crisis will require new ways of thinking and acting to overcome common challenges, and thus making use of our collective intelligence should be more urgent than ever. In the longer term, in order to mobilise collective intelligence across the EU and to fully exploit its innovative potential, the EU needs to strengthen its education policies and promote a shared understanding of a holistic approach to innovation and of collective intelligence – and thus become a ‘global brain,’ with a solid institutional set-up at the centre of a subsidised experimentation process that meets the challenges imposed by modernday transformations…(More)”.

Privacy Protection Key for Using Patient Data to Develop AI Tools

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by  Jessica Kent: “Clinical data should be treated as a public good when used for research or artificial intelligence algorithm development, so long as patients’ privacy is protected, according to a report from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

As artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly applied to medical imaging, bringing the potential for streamlined analysis and faster diagnoses, the industry still lacks a broad consensus on an ethical framework for sharing this data.

“Now that we have electronic access to clinical data and the data processing tools, we can dramatically accelerate our ability to gain understanding and develop new applications that can benefit patients and populations,” said study lead author David B. Larson, MD, MBA, from the Stanford University School of Medicine. “But unsettled questions regarding the ethical use of the data often preclude the sharing of that information.”

To offer solutions around data sharing for AI development, RSNA developed a framework that highlights how to ethically use patient data for secondary purposes.

“Medical data, which are simply recorded observations, are acquired for the purposes of providing patient care,” Larson said….(More)”

Coronavirus Innovation Map

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“The Coronavirus Innovation Map is a platform of hundreds of innovations and solutions from around the world that help people cope and adapt to life amid the coronavirus pandemic, and to connect innovators.

The CoronaVirus Innovation Map is a visualized global database that is mapping the innovations related to tackling coronavirus in various fields such as diagnostics, treatment, lifestyle changes, etc., on a geographical scale….

Our goal with the Coronavirus Innovation Map is to build a crowdsourced resource that maps hundreds of innovations and solutions globally that help people cope and adapt to life amid the coronavirus, and to connect innovators.

This platform is a database for innovators to know who the other players are and where the projects or startups are located allowing them to connect and create solutions in this field. Policymakers will also be able to efficiently look for viable solutions in one place.

You may use the map to browse initiatives in specific locations (type a city or country in the search box), or choose a category wherein you would like to find a solution….(More)”