Frontier AI: double-edged sword for public sector

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Zeynep Engin: “The power of the latest AI technologies, often referred to as ‘frontier AI’, lies in their ability to automate decision-making by harnessing complex statistical insights from vast amounts of unstructured data, using models that surpass human understanding. The introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022 marked a new era for these technologies, making advanced AI models accessible to a wide range of users, a development poised to permanently reshape how our societies function.

From a public policy perspective, this capacity offers the optimistic potential to enable personalised services at scale, potentially revolutionising healthcare, education, local services, democratic processes, and justice, tailoring them to everyone’s unique needs in a digitally connected society. The ambition is to achieve better outcomes than humanity has managed so far without AI assistance. There is certainly a vast opportunity for improvement, given the current state of global inequity, environmental degradation, polarised societies, and other chronic challenges facing humanity.

However, it is crucial to temper this optimism with recognising the significant risks. In their current trajectories, these technologies are already starting to undermine hard-won democratic gains and civil rights. Integrating AI into public policy and decision-making processes risks exacerbating existing inequalities and unfairness, potentially leading to new, uncontrollable forms of discrimination at unprecedented speed and scale. The environmental impacts, both direct and indirect, could be catastrophic, while the rise of AI-powered personalised misinformation and behavioural manipulation is contributing to increasingly polarised societies.

Steering the direction of AI to be in the public interest requires a deeper understanding of its characteristics and behaviour. To imagine and design new approaches to public policy and decision-making, we first need a comprehensive understanding of what this remarkable technology offers and its potential implications…(More)”.

Data sovereignty for local governments. Considerations and enablers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by JRC Data sovereignty for local governments refers to a capacity to control and/or access data, and to foster a digital transformation aligned with societal values and EU Commission political priorities. Data sovereignty clauses are an instrument that local governments may use to compel companies to share data of public interest. Albeit promising, little is known about the peculiarities of this instrument and how it has been implemented so far. This policy brief aims at filling the gap by systematising existing knowledge and providing policy-relevant recommendations for its wider implementation…(More)”.

Children and Young People’s Participation in Climate Assemblies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Guide by KNOCA: “This guide draws on the experiences and advice of children, young people and adults involved in citizens’ assemblies that have taken place at national, city and community levels across nine countries, highlighting that:

  • Involving children and young people can enrich the intergenerational legitimacy and impact of climate assemblies: adult assembly members are reminded of their responsibilities to younger and future generations, and children and young people feel listened to, valued and taken seriously.
  • Involving children and young people has significant potential to strengthen the future of democracy and climate governance by enhancing democratic and climate literacy within education systems.
  • Children and young people can and should be involved in climate assemblies in different ways. Most importantly, children and young people should be involved from the very beginning of the process to ensure it reflects children and young people’s own ideas.
  • There are practical, ethical and design factors to consider when working with children and young people which can often be positively navigated by taking a child rights-based approach to the conceptualisation, design and delivery of climate assemblies…(More)”.

Breaking the Wall of Digital Heteronomy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview with Julia Janssen: “The walls of algorithms increasingly shape your life. Telling what to buy, where to go, what news to believe or songs to listen to. Data helps to navigate the world’s complexity and its endless possibilities. Artificial intelligence promises frictionless experiences, tailored and targeted, seamless and optimized to serve you best. But, at what cost? Frictionlessness comes with obedience. To the machine, the market and your own prophesy.

Mapping the Oblivion researches the influence of data and AI on human autonomy. The installation visualized Netflix’s percentage-based prediction models to provoke questions about to what extent we want to quantify choices. Will you only watch movies that are over 64% to your liking? Dine at restaurants that match your appetite above 76%. Date people with a compatibility rate of 89%? Will you never choose the career you want when there is only a 12% chance you’ll succeed? Do you want to outsmart your intuition with systems you do not understand and follow the map of probabilities and statistics?

Digital heteronomy is a condition in which one is guided by data, governed by AI and ordained by the industry. Homo Sapiens, the knowing being becomes Homo Stultus, the controllable being.

Living a quantified life in a numeric world. Not having to choose, doubt or wonder. Kept safe, risk-free and predictable within algorithmic walls. Exhausted of autonomy, creativity and randomness. Imprisoned in bubbles, profiles and behavioural tribes. Controllable, observable and monetizable.

Breaking the wall of digital heteronomy means taking back control over our data, identity, choices and chances in life. Honouring the unexpected, risk, doubt and having an unknown future. Shattering the power structures created by Big Tech to harvest information and capitalize on unfairness, vulnerabilities and fears. Breaking the wall of digital heteronomy means breaking down a system where profit is more important than people…(More)”.

Policy for responsible use of AI in government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Policy by the Australian Government: “The Policy for the responsible use of AI in government ensures that government plays a leadership role in embracing AI for the benefit of Australians while ensuring its safe, ethical and responsible use, in line with community expectations. The policy:

  • provides a unified approach for government to engage with AI confidently, safely and responsibly, and realise its benefits
  • aims to strengthen public trust in government’s use of AI by providing enhanced transparency, governance and risk assurance
  • aims to embed a forward leaning, adaptive approach for government’s use of AI that is designed to evolve and develop over time…(More)”.

Policy Fit for the Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Primer by the Australian Government: “The Futures Primer is part of the “Policy Fit for the Future” project, building Australian Public Service capability to use futures techniques in policymaking through horizon scanning, visioning and scenario planning. These tools help anticipate and navigate future risks and opportunities.

The tools and advice can be adapted to any policy challenge, and reflect the views of global experts in futures and strategic foresight, both within and outside the APS…The Futures Primer offers a range of flexible tools and advice that can be adapted to any policy challenge. It reflects the views of global experts in futures and strategic foresight, both within and outside the APS…(More)”.

Relational ethics in health care automation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Frances Shaw and Anthony McCosker: “Despite the transformative potential of automation and clinical decision support technology in health care, there is growing urgency for more nuanced approaches to ethics. Relational ethics is an approach that can guide the responsible use of a range of automated decision-making systems including the use of generative artificial intelligence and large language models as they affect health care relationships. 

There is an urgent need for sector-wide training and scrutiny regarding the effects of automation using relational ethics touchstones, such as patient-centred health care, informed consent, patient autonomy, shared decision-making, empathy and the politics of care.

The purpose of this review is to offer a provocation for health care practitioners, managers and policy makers to consider the use automated tools in practice settings and examine how these tools might affect relationships and hence care outcomes…(More)”.

Constructing Valid Geospatial Tools for Environmental Justice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “Decades of research have shown that the most disadvantaged communities exist at the intersection of high levels of hazard exposure, racial and ethnic marginalization, and poverty.

Mapping and geographical information systems have been crucial for analyzing the environmental burdens of marginalized communities, and several federal and state geospatial tools have emerged to help address environmental justice concerns — such as the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool developed in 2022 in response to Justice40 initiatives from the Biden administration.

Constructing Valid Geospatial Tools for Environmental Justice, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, offers recommendations for developing environmental justice tools that reflect the experiences of the communities they measure.

The report recommends data strategies focused on community engagement, validation, and documentation. It emphasizes using a structured development process and offers guidance for selecting and assessing indicators, integrating indicators, and incorporating cumulative impact scoring. Tool developers should choose measures of economic burden beyond the federal poverty level that account for additional dimensions of wealth and geographic variations in cost of living. They should also use indicators that measure the impacts of racism in policies and practices that have led to current disparities…(More)”.

Using AI to Map Urban Change

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brief by Tianyuan Huang, Zejia Wu, Jiajun Wu, Jackelyn Hwang, Ram Rajagopal: “Cities are constantly evolving, and better understanding those changes facilitates better urban planning and infrastructure assessments and leads to more sustainable social and environmental interventions. Researchers currently use data such as satellite imagery to study changing urban environments and what those changes mean for public policy and urban design. But flaws in the current approaches, such as inadequately granular data, limit their scalability and their potential to inform public policy across social, political, economic, and environmental issues.

Street-level images offer an alternative source of insights. These images are frequently updated and high-resolution. They also directly capture what’s happening on a street level in a neighborhood or across a city. Analyzing street-level images has already proven useful to researchers studying socioeconomic attributes and neighborhood gentrification, both of which are essential pieces of information in urban design, sustainability efforts, and public policy decision-making for cities. Yet, much like other data sources, street-level images present challenges: accessibility limits, shadow and lighting issues, and difficulties scaling up analysis.

To address these challenges, our paper “CityPulse: Fine-Grained Assessment of Urban Change with Street View Time Series” introduces a multicity dataset of labeled street-view images and proposes a novel artificial intelligence (AI) model to detect urban changes such as gentrification. We demonstrate the change-detection model’s effectiveness by testing it on images from Seattle, Washington, and show that it can provide important insights into urban changes over time and at scale. Our data-driven approach has the potential to allow researchers and public policy analysts to automate and scale up their analysis of neighborhood and citywide socioeconomic change…(More)”.

Visualization for Public Involvement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “Visualization methods have long been integral to the public involvement process for transportation planning and project development. From well-established methods such as conceptual sketches or photo simulations to the latest immersive technologies, state departments of transportation (DOTs) recognize that visualizations can significantly increase public understanding of a project’s appearance and physical impacts. Emerging methods such as interactive three-dimensional environments, virtual reality, and augmented reality can dramatically enhance public understanding of transportation options and design concepts…(More)”.