Despite Its Problems, Network Technology Can Help Renew Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Daniel Araya: “The impact of digital technologies on contemporary economic and social development has been nothing short of revolutionary. The rise of the internet has transformed the way we share content, buy and sell goods, and manage our institutions. But while the hope of the internet has been its capacity to expand human connection and bring people together, the reality has often been something else entirely.

When social media networks first emerged about a decade ago, they were hailed as “technologies of liberation” with the capacity to spread democracy. While these social networks have undeniably democratized access to information, they have also helped to stimulate social and political fragmentation, eroding the discursive fibres that hold democracies together.

Prior to the internet, news and media were the domain of professional journalists, overseen by powerful experts, and shaped by gatekeepers. However, in the age of the internet, platforms circumvent the need for gatekeepers altogether. Bypassing the centralized distribution channels that have served as a foundation to mass industrial societies, social networks have begun reshaping the way democratic societies build consensus. Given the importance of discourse to democratic self-government, concern is growing that democracy is failing…(More)”.

Unlocking the Potential: The Call for an International Decade of Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by Stefaan Verhulst : “The goal of this working paper is to reiterate the central importance of data – to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in particular, but more generally to the landscape of digital technology.

What follows serves as a clarion call to the global community to prioritize and advance data as the bedrock for social and economic development, especially for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It begins by recognizing the existence of significant remaining challenges related to data; encompassing issues of accessibility, distribution, divides, and asymmetries. In light of these challenges, and as we propel ourselves into an era increasingly dominated by AI and AI-related innovation, the paper argues that establishing a more robust foundation for the stewardship of data is critical; a foundation that, for instance, embodies inclusivity, self-determination, and responsibility.

Finally, the paper advocates for the creation of an International Decade of Data (IDD), an initiative aimed at solidifying this foundation globally and advancing our collective efforts towards data-driven progress.

Download ‘Unlocking the Potential: The Call for an International Decade of Data’ here. “

New Tools to Guide Data Sharing Agreements

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Andrew J. Zahuranec, Stefaan Verhulst, and Hannah Chafetz: “The process of forming a data-sharing agreement is not easy. The process involves figuring out incentives, evaluating the degree to which others are willing and able to collaborate, and defining the specific conduct that is and is not allowed. Even under the best of circumstances, these steps can be costly and time-consuming.

Today, the Open Data Policy Lab took a step to help data practitioners control these costs. “Moving from Idea to Practice: Three Resources to Streamline the Creation of Data Sharing Agreements” provides data practitioners with three resources meant to support them throughout the process of developing an agreement. These include:

  • A Guide to Principled Data Sharing Agreement Negotiation by Design: A document outlining the different principles that a data practitioner might seek to uphold while negotiating an agreement;
  • The Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration 2.0: A listing of the different kinds of data sharing agreement provisions that a data practitioner might include in an agreement;
  • A Readiness Matrix for Data Sharing Agreements: A form to evaluate the degree to which a partner can participate in a data-sharing agreement.

The resources are a result of a series of Open Data Action Labs, an initiative from the Open Data Policy Lab to define new strategies and tools that can help organizations resolve policy challenges they face. The Action Labs are built around a series of workshops (called “studios”) which given experts and stakeholders an opportunity to define the problems facing them and then ideate possible solutions in a collaborative setting. In February and March 2023, the Open Data Policy Lab and Trust Relay co-hosted conversations with experts in law, data, and smart cities on the challenge of forming a data sharing agreement. Find all the resources here.”

Matchmaking Research To Policy: Introducing Britain’s Areas Of Research Interest Database

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kathryn Oliver: “Areas of research interest (ARIs) were originally recommended in the 2015 Nurse Review, which argued that if government stated what it needed to know more clearly and more regularly, then it would be easier for policy-relevant research to be produced.

During our time in government, myself and Annette Boaz worked to develop these areas of research interest, mobilize experts and produce evidence syntheses and other outputs addressing them, largely in response to the COVID pandemic. As readers of this blog will know, we have learned a lot about what it takes to mobilize evidence – the hard, and often hidden labor of creating and sustaining relationships, being part of transient teams, managing group dynamics, and honing listening and diplomatic skills.

Some of the challenges we encountered include the oft-cited, cultural gap between research and policy, the relevance of evidence, and the difficulty in resourcing knowledge mobilization and evidence synthesis require systemic responses. However, one challenge, the information gap noted by Nurse, between researchers and what government departments actually want to know offered a simpler solution.

Up until September 2023, departmental ARIs were published on gov.uk, in pdf or html format. Although a good start, we felt that having all the ARIs in one searchable database would make them more interactive and accessible. So, working with Overton, we developed the new ARI database. The primary benefit of the database will be to raise awareness of ARIs (through email alerts about new ARIs) and accessibility (by holding all ARIs in one place which is easily searchable)…(More)”.

Climate data can save lives. Most countries can’t access it.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Zoya Teirstein: “Earth just experienced one of its hottest, and most damaging, periods on record. Heat waves in the United States, Europe, and China; catastrophic flooding in India, Brazil, Hong Kong, and Libya; and outbreaks of malaria, dengue, and other mosquito-borne illnesses across southern Asia claimed tens of thousands of lives. The vast majority of these deaths could have been averted with the right safeguards in place.

The World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, published a report last week that shows just 11 percent of countries have the full arsenal of tools required to save lives as the impacts of climate change — including deadly weather events, infectious diseases, and respiratory illnesses like asthma — become more extreme. The United Nations climate agency predicts that significant natural disasters will hit the planet 560 times per year by the end of this decade. What’s more, countries that lack early warning systems, such as extreme heat alerts, will see eight times more climate-related deaths than countries that are better prepared. By midcentury, some 50 percent of these deaths will take place in Africa, a continent that is responsible for around 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions each year…(More)”.

Smart City Data Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Smart cities leverage technologies, in particular digital, to generate a vast amount of real-time data to inform policy- and decision-making for an efficient and effective public service delivery. Their success largely depends on the availability and effective use of data. However, the amount of data generated is growing more rapidly than governments’ capacity to store and process them, and the growing number of stakeholders involved in data production, analysis and storage pushes cities data management capacity to the limit. Despite the wide range of local and national initiatives to enhance smart city data governance, urban data is still a challenge for national and city governments due to: insufficient financial resources; lack of business models for financing and refinancing of data collection; limited access to skilled experts; the lack of full compliance with the national legislation on data sharing and protection; and data and security risks. Facing these challenges is essential to managing and sharing data sensibly if cities are to boost citizens’ well-being and promote sustainable environments…(More)”

Assessing and Suing an Algorithm

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Elina Treyger, Jirka Taylor, Daniel Kim, and Maynard A. Holliday: “Artificial intelligence algorithms are permeating nearly every domain of human activity, including processes that make decisions about interests central to individual welfare and well-being. How do public perceptions of algorithmic decisionmaking in these domains compare with perceptions of traditional human decisionmaking? What kinds of judgments about the shortcomings of algorithmic decisionmaking processes underlie these perceptions? Will individuals be willing to hold algorithms accountable through legal channels for unfair, incorrect, or otherwise problematic decisions?

Answers to these questions matter at several levels. In a democratic society, a degree of public acceptance is needed for algorithms to become successfully integrated into decisionmaking processes. And public perceptions will shape how the harms and wrongs caused by algorithmic decisionmaking are handled. This report shares the results of a survey experiment designed to contribute to researchers’ understanding of how U.S. public perceptions are evolving in these respects in one high-stakes setting: decisions related to employment and unemployment…(More)”.

AI and Democracy’s Digital Identity Crisis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Shrey Jain, Connor Spelliscy, Samuel Vance-Law and Scott Moore: “AI-enabled tools have become sophisticated enough to allow a small number of individuals to run disinformation campaigns of an unprecedented scale. Privacy-preserving identity attestations can drastically reduce instances of impersonation and make disinformation easy to identify and potentially hinder. By understanding how identity attestations are positioned across the spectrum of decentralization, we can gain a better understanding of the costs and benefits of various attestations. In this paper, we discuss attestation types, including governmental, biometric, federated, and web of trust-based, and include examples such as e-Estonia, China’s social credit system, Worldcoin, OAuth, X (formerly Twitter), Gitcoin Passport, and EAS. We believe that the most resilient systems create an identity that evolves and is connected to a network of similarly evolving identities that verify one another. In this type of system, each entity contributes its respective credibility to the attestation process, creating a larger, more comprehensive set of attestations. We believe these systems could be the best approach to authenticating identity and protecting against some of the threats to democracy that AI can pose in the hands of malicious actors. However, governments will likely attempt to mitigate these risks by implementing centralized identity authentication systems; these centralized systems could themselves pose risks to the democratic processes they are built to defend. We therefore recommend that policymakers support the development of standards-setting organizations for identity, provide legal clarity for builders of decentralized tooling, and fund research critical to effective identity authentication systems…(More)”

The Bletchley Declaration

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Declaration by Countries Attending the AI Safety Summit, 1-2 November 2023: “In the context of our cooperation, and to inform action at the national and international levels, our agenda for addressing frontier AI risk will focus on:

  • identifying AI safety risks of shared concern, building a shared scientific and evidence-based understanding of these risks, and sustaining that understanding as capabilities continue to increase, in the context of a wider global approach to understanding the impact of AI in our societies.
  • building respective risk-based policies across our countries to ensure safety in light of such risks, collaborating as appropriate while recognising our approaches may differ based on national circumstances and applicable legal frameworks. This includes, alongside increased transparency by private actors developing frontier AI capabilities, appropriate evaluation metrics, tools for safety testing, and developing relevant public sector capability and scientific research.

In furtherance of this agenda, we resolve to support an internationally inclusive network of scientific research on frontier AI safety that encompasses and complements existing and new multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral collaboration, including through existing international fora and other relevant initiatives, to facilitate the provision of the best science available for policy making and the public good.

In recognition of the transformative positive potential of AI, and as part of ensuring wider international cooperation on AI, we resolve to sustain an inclusive global dialogue that engages existing international fora and other relevant initiatives and contributes in an open manner to broader international discussions, and to continue research on frontier AI safety to ensure that the benefits of the technology can be harnessed responsibly for good and for all. We look forward to meeting again in 2024…(More)”.

Enterprise Value and the Value of Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dan Ciuriak: “Data is often said to be the most valuable commodity of our age. It is a curiosity, therefore, that it remains largely invisible on the balance sheets of companies and largely unmeasured in our national economic accounts. This paper comments on the problems of using cost-based or transactions-based methods to establish value for a nation’s data in the system of national accounts and suggests that this should be complemented with value of economic rents attributable to data. This rent is part of enterprise value; accordingly, an indicator is required as an instrumental variable for the use of data for value creation within firms. The paper argues that traditional accounting looks through the firm to its tangible (and certain intangible) assets; that may no longer be feasible in measuring and understanding the data-driven economy…(More)”