Public AI White Paper – A Public Alternative to Private AI Dominance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

White paper by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and Open Future: “Today, the most advanced AI systems are developed and controlled by a small number of private companies. These companies hold power not only over the models themselves but also over key resources such as computing infrastructure. This concentration of power poses not only economic risks but also significant democratic challenges.

The Public AI White Paper presents an alternative vision, outlining how open and public-interest approaches to AI can be developed and institutionalized. It advocates for a rebalancing of power within the AI ecosystem – with the goal of enabling societies to shape AI actively, rather than merely consume it…(More)”.

From Software to Society — Openness in a changing world

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Henriette Litta and Peter Bihr: “…takes stock and looks to the future: What does openness mean in the digital age? Is the concept still up to date? The study traces the development of openness and analyses current challenges. It is based on interviews with experts and extensive literature research. The key insights at a glance are:

Give Openness a purpose. Especially in times of increasing injustice, surveillance and power monopolies, a clear framework for meaningful openness is needed, as this is often lacking. Companies market ‘open’ products without enabling co-creation. Political actors invoke openness without strengthening democratic control. This is particularly evident when dealing with AI. AI systems are complex and are often dominated by a few tech companies – which makes opening them up a fundamental challenge. The dominance of some tech companies is also massively exploited, which can lead to the censorship of other opinions.

Protect Openness by adding guard rails. Those who demand openness must also be prepared to get involved in political disputes – against a market monopoly, for example. According to Litta and Bihr, this requires new licence models that include obligations to return and share, as well as stricter enforcement of antitrust law and data protection. Openness therefore needs rules…(More)”.

Addressing Digital Harms in Conflict

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Henriette Litta and Peter Bihr: “…takes stock and looks to the future: What does openness mean in the digital age? Is the concept still up to date? The study traces the development of Openness and analyses current challenges. It is based on interviews with experts and extensive literature research. The key insights at a glance are:

  • Give Openness a purpose.
  • Protect Openness by adding guard rails.
  • Open innovation and infrastructure need investments.
  • Openness is not neutral.
  • Market domination needs to be curtailed…(More)”.

Reimagining Data Governance for AI: Operationalizing Social Licensing for Data Reuse

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Stefaan Verhulst, Adam Zable, Andrew J. Zahuranec, and Peter Addo: “…introduces a practical, community-centered framework for governing data reuse in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). As AI increasingly relies on data from LMICs, affected communities are often excluded from decision-making and see little benefit from how their data is used. This report,…reframes data governance through social licensing—a participatory model that empowers communities to collectively define, document, and enforce conditions for how their data is reused. It offers a step-by-step methodology and actionable tools, including a Social Licensing Questionnaire and adaptable contract clauses, alongisde real-world scenarios and recommendations for enforcement, policy integration, and future research. This report recasts data governance as a collective, continuous process – shifting the focus from individual consent to community decision-making…(More)”.

Global Citizens’ Assemblies: Pathways for the UN – Principles, Design, and Implementation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Democracy International & Democracy Without Borders: “This report encourages the use of GCAs by different actors and in different settings without making recommendations or expressing preferences on how this should be done. We envision that ultimately there will be a dynamic ecosystem making use of this deliberative format. However, the report particularly discusses the potential for GCAs to be set up by and benefit the UN. As a tool to be used by the UN, this paper recommends that the UN General Assembly (UNGA) applies Article 22 of the UN Charter to establish a dedicated permanent framework to codify procedures and operations, increase efficiency and create synergies. The report recommends that this UN framework should enable UN bodies and entities to set up and operate different ad hoc GCAs as needed.

GCAs are positioned as complementary to other initiatives in the field, such as creating a UN Parliamentary Assembly or a UN World Citizens’ Initiative. They offer a specific pathway for global public deliberation and participation and bridging the gap between citizens and global decision-makers.

While GCAs face practical limitations due to the world’s diversity and scale, they offer a valuable opportunity to foster trust in multilateral institutions and empower citizens to have a voice in global policy-making. By enhancing inclusive deliberation and putting forward actionable outcomes, GCAs have the potential to improve the democratic character of global governance and promote more responsive, citizen-centered approaches to solving planetary challenges…(More)”.

Leading, not lagging: Africa’s gen AI opportunity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Mayowa Kuyoro, Umar Bagus: “The rapid rise of gen AI has captured the world’s imagination and accelerated the integration of AI into the global economy and the lives of people across the world. Gen AI heralds a step change in productivity. As institutions apply AI in novel ways, beyond the advanced analytics and machine learning (ML) applications of the past ten years, the global economy could increase significantly, improving the lives and livelihoods of millions.1

Nowhere is this truer than in Africa, a continent that has already demonstrated its ability to use technology to leapfrog traditional development pathways; for example, mobile technology overcoming the fixed-line internet gap, mobile payments in Kenya, and numerous African institutions making the leap to cloud faster than their peers in developed markets.2 Africa has been quick on the uptake with gen AI, too, with many unique and ingenious applications and deployments well underway…(More)”.

Across McKinsey’s client service work in Africa, many institutions have tested and deployed AI solutions. Our research has found that more than 40 percent of institutions have either started to experiment with gen AI or have already implemented significant solutions (see sidebar “About the research inputs”). However, the continent has so far only scratched the surface of what is possible, with both AI and gen AI. If institutions can address barriers and focus on building for scale, our analysis suggests African economies could unlock up to $100 billion in annual economic value across multiple sectors from gen AI alone. That is in addition to the still-untapped potential from traditional AI and ML in many sectors today—the combined traditional AI and gen AI total is more than double what gen AI can unlock on its own, with traditional AI making up at least 60 percent of the value…(More)”

The European Data Cooperative (EDC) 

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Invest Europe: “The European Data Cooperative (EDC) is a joint initiative developed by Invest Europe and its national association partners to collect Europe-wide industry data on activity (fundraising, investments, & divestments), economic impact (Employment, Turnover, EBITDA, & CAPEX) and ESG.

The EDC platform is jointly owned and operated by the private equity and venture capital associations of Europe. It serves as a single data entry point for their members and other contributors across the continent. The EDC brings together:

  • 4,000 firms
  • 10,900 funds
  • 86,700 portfolio companies
  • 330,900 transactions

Using one platform with a standardised methodology allows us to have consistent, robust pan-European statistics that are comparable across the region…(More)”

The world at our fingertips, just out of reach: the algorithmic age of AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Soumi Banerjee: “Artificial intelligence (AI) has made global movements, testimonies, and critiques seem just a swipe away. The digital realm, powered by machine learning and algorithmic recommendation systems, offers an abundance of visual, textual, and auditory information. With a few swipes or keystrokes, the unbounded world lies open before us. Yet this ‘openness’ conceals a fundamental paradox: the distinction between availability and accessibility.

What is technically available is not always epistemically accessible. What appears global is often algorithmically curated. And what is served to users under the guise of choice frequently reflects the imperatives of engagement, profit, and emotional resonance over critical understanding or cognitive expansion.

The transformative potential of AI in democratising access to information comes with risks. Algorithmic enclosure and content curation can deepen epistemic inequality, particularly for the youth, whose digital fluency often masks a lack of epistemic literacy. What we need is algorithmic transparency, civic education in media literacy, and inclusive knowledge formats…(More)”.

Policy Implications of DeepSeek AI’s Talent Base

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brief by Amy Zegart and Emerson Johnston: “Chinese startup DeepSeek’s highly capable R1 and V3 models challenged prevailing beliefs about the United States’ advantage in AI innovation, but public debate focused more on the company’s training data and computing power than human talent. We analyzed data on the 223 authors listed on DeepSeek’s five foundational technical research papers, including information on their research output, citations, and institutional affiliations, to identify notable talent patterns. Nearly all of DeepSeek’s researchers were educated or trained in China, and more than half never left China for schooling or work. Of the quarter or so that did gain some experience in the United States, most returned to China to work on AI development there. These findings challenge the core assumption that the United States holds a natural AI talent lead. Policymakers need to reinvest in competing to attract and retain the world’s best AI talent while bolstering STEM education to maintain competitiveness…(More)”.

Interoperability and Openness Between Different Governance Models: The Dynamics of Mastodon/Threads and Wikipedia/Google

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Aline Blankertz & Svea Windwehr: “Governments, businesses and civil society representatives, among others, call for “alternatives” to compete with and possibly replace big tech platforms. These alternatives are usually characterized by different governance approaches like being not-for-profit, open, free, decentralized and/or community-based. We find that strengthening alternative governance models needs to account for the dynamic effects of operating in a digital ecosystem shaped by ad-driven platforms. Specifically, we explore in this article: 1) how interoperability between the microblogging platforms Threads (by Meta) and Mastodon (a not-for-profit service running on a federated open-source protocol) may foster competition, but also create a risk of converging governance in terms of e.g. content moderation and privacy practices; 2) how openness of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia allows Google Search to appropriate most of the value created by their vertical interaction and how the Wikimedia Foundation seeks to reduce that imbalance; 3) which types of interventions might be suitable to support alternatives without forcing them to emulate big tech governance, including asymmetric interoperability, digital taxes and regulatory restraints on commercial platforms…(More)”.