An intro to AI, made for students

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Reena Jana at Google: “Adorable, operatic blobs. A global, online guessing game. Scribbles that transform into works of art. These may not sound like they’re part of a curriculum, but learning the basics of how artificial intelligence (AI) works doesn’t have to be complicated, super-technical or boring.

To celebrate Digital Learning Day, we’re releasing a new lesson from Applied Digital Skills, Google’s free, online, video-based curriculum (and part of the larger Grow with Google initiative). “Discover AI in Daily Life” was designed with middle and high school students in mind, and dives into how AI is built, and how it helps people every day.

AI for anyone — and everyone

“Twenty or 30 years ago, students might have learned basic typing skills in school,” says Dr. Patrick Gage Kelley, a Google Trust and Safety user experience researcher who co-created (and narrates) the “Discover AI in Daily Life” lesson. “Today, ‘AI literacy’ is a key skill. It’s important that students everywhere, from all backgrounds, are given the opportunity to learn about AI.”

“Discover AI in Daily Life” begins with the basics. You’ll find simple, non-technical explanations of how a machine can “learn” from patterns in data, and why it’s important to train AI responsibly and avoid unfair bias.

First-hand experiences with AI

“By encouraging students to engage directly with everyday tools and experiment with them, they get a first-hand experience of the potential uses and limitations of AI,” says Dr. Annica Voneche, the lesson’s learning designer. “Those experiences can then be tied to a more theoretical explanation of the technology behind it, in a way that makes the often abstract concepts behind AI tangible.”…(More)”.

GovTech Practices in the EU

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Kuziemski, M., Mergel, I., Ulrich, P. and Martinez, A.: “To support governments in the EU embracing GovTech, this report provides an overview of the diversity of GovTech programmes and shares lessons learnt for setting up government-run GovTech programmes. While the focus of this report is on national GovTech programmes, its findings and conclusions can be applied to others levels of government as well. The term GovTech refers to the use of emerging technologies and digital products and services by government from start-ups and SMEs – instead of relying on large system integrators. This report presents an overview of how the existing GovTech programmes are set up in different EU member states and introduces practical case studies. This is followed by a discussion of the rationale of governments’ investment in GovTech and the barriers countries have encountered when engaging with the GovTech ecosystem. The report then distils important lessons learned for setting up government-run GovTech programmes. This report is aimed at anyone wanting to understand how governments are already supporting GovTech, and especially public sector managers who are looking for a starting point for establishing or improving a GovTech programme. It is part of two twin reports on GovTech developed by the JRC with support from the ISA² programme…(More)”.

New Days Future Kit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Toolbox by the Danish Design Center: “The New Days’ Future Kit is a toolbox with guides, materials, and visual tools that make it possible to bring diverse groups together to work experimentally, concretely, and co-creatively with aging and care of the future.

An essential part of the kit is the collection of speculative fragments from the future that consist of small glimpses, artifacts, and tales. The physical version contains actual versions of the artifacts and materials. These are introduced and used actively in workshops with us.

The toolkit is relevant for anyone working in the public or private sector with care. The digital version of the toolkit presented here is meant as an inspiration. The elements will provoke you and challenge your thoughts and ambitions for the future of care. If the tools make you curious, reach out to us and we’ll arrange a targeted workshop for you.

The toolbox results from a long-running process of exploring and learning from alternative and desirable futures and translating the insights into innovative experiments in the present…(More)”.

The Data Act

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “The proposed Regulation on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data — also known as the Data Act —  was adopted by the Commission on 23 February 2022. The Data Act is a key pillar of the European strategy for data. It will make an important contribution to the digital transformation objective of the Digital Decade.

The new measures complement the Data Governance Regulation proposed in November 2020, the first deliverable of the European strategy for data. While the Data Governance Regulation creates the processes and structures to facilitate data, the Data Act clarifies who can create value from data and under which conditions. 

The Data Act will ensure fairness by setting up rules regarding the use of data generated by Internet of Things (IoT) devices. 

Users of objects or devices generally believe that they should have full rights of the data they generate. However, these rights are often unclear. And, manufacturers do not always design their products in a way that allows users, both professionals and consumers, to take full advantage of the digital data they create when using IoT objects. This leads to a situation where there is no fair distribution of the capacity to build on such important digital data, holding back digitisation and value creation. 

Furthermore, the Data Act aims to ensure consistency between data access rights, which are often developed for specific situations and with varying rules and conditions. While the Data Act is without prejudice to existing data access obligations, any future rules should be consistent with it. Existing rules should be assessed and, if relevant, aligned to the Data Act when their review is due…(More)” (see also: Study to support an Impact Assessment on enhancing the use of data in Europe).

Measuring Data Demand Within the Public Sector

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Discussion Paper for data.europa.eu: “What are the needs of open data re-users from public sector institutions in Europe? This question is critical to facilitate the publication of open data and support to re-users from EU institutions and public authorities in Member States in line with their needs for policymaking, service provision and organisational management. To what extent is this question asked in open data policymaking across Europe? And how?

This discussion paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art of existing approaches and indicators in the European open data landscape to assess public institutions’ needs as data re-users. This overview serves as a basis to drive a discussion with public sector stakeholders on suitable methods and indicators to measure public institutions’ data demand to foster demand-driven data publication and support on data.europa.eu, the official portal for European data.

The undertaken literature review and the analysis of international measurement frameworks show feeble evidence of existing approaches and indicators developed by EU institutions and Member States to assess public institutions’ open data demand. The results of this discussion paper raise the following questions to be discussed with stakeholders to further develop demand-driven data publication and support to public sector re-users.

  1. Why is it important to measure public institutions’ data demand?
  2. What are suitable engagement activities for public sector re-users?
  3. What is needed to evolve demand measurement from an occasional to a structural
    activity?
  4. How can automated metrics be leveraged to measure the data demand by public
    institutions?
  5. To what extent can existing international indicators be re-used and complemented to
    measure public institutions’ data demand?
  6. How can data providers in EU institutions and Member States be supported in adopting a
    demand-driven approach towards the publication of open data for public sector purposes?…(More)”.

Collaborative Democracy

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eBook by PublicInput: “…Democracy is an emergent phenomenon that evolves and changes over time.  Amid the constant and ever-present circumstances of change, collaborative democracy is the next phase in the evolution of democracy itself.  When we zoom out over the historical trend line from anarchy to democracy, this evolution looks like this:   

Collaborative democracy, as the next phase in the evolution of democracy, will be enabled not through more conflict, but rather through technological innovation…(More)”.

OECD Framework for the Classification of AI systems

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OECD Digital Economy Paper: “As artificial intelligence (AI) integrates all sectors at a rapid pace, different AI systems bring different benefits and risks. In comparing virtual assistants, self-driving vehicles and video recommendations for children, it is easy to see that the benefits and risks of each are very different. Their specificities will require different approaches to policy making and governance. To help policy makers, regulators, legislators and others characterise AI systems deployed in specific contexts, the OECD has developed a user-friendly tool to evaluate AI systems from a policy perspective. It can be applied to the widest range of AI systems across the following dimensions: People & Planet; Economic Context; Data & Input; AI model; and Task & Output. Each of the framework’s dimensions has a subset of properties and attributes to define and assess policy implications and to guide an innovative and trustworthy approach to AI as outlined in the OECD AI Principles….(More)”.

Data Dissemination in the Digital Age

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Report by PARIS21 and Open Data Watch: “…a first account of the state of data portals in national statistical offices.

Data portals form a critical link between producers and users of data; and they facilitate the use of data in evidence-based decision making. National statistical offices, supported by their international partners, have embraced data portals as a way to disseminate official data.

However, data portals need to be designed and implemented in a sustainable manner to be beneficial to end users. Currently, there is a lack of common principles and guidelines as to how these data portals should be set up and managed to guide institutions.

This report proposes a holistic method to evaluate data portals and proposes recommendations to improve their use and function…(More)”.

Advancing Digital Agency: The Power of Data Intermediaries

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World Economic Forum Report: “With the integration of screenless technology into everyday life, the data ecosystem is growing increasingly complicated. New ambient data collection methods bring many benefits, but they also have the potential to amplify mistrust between people and technology.

In this Insight Report, the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on Data Intermediaries explores the potential to outsource human decision points to an agent acting on an individual’s behalf, in the form of a data intermediary.

The opportunities and risks of such a new approach are explored, representing one of many new policy anchors through and around which individuals may navigate new data ecosystem models. Levers of action for both the public and private sectors are suggested to ensure a future-proof digital policy environment that allows for the seamless and trusted movement of data between people and the technology that serves them…(More)”.

Global Cooperation on Digital Governance and the Geoeconomics of New Technologies in a Multi-polar World

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A special collection of papers by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and King’s College London (KCL) resulting from: “… a virtual conference as part of KCL’s Project for Peaceful Competition. It brought together an intellectually and geographically diverse group of experts to discuss the geoeconomics of new digital technologies and the prospects for governance of the technologies in a multi-polar world. The papers prepared for discussion at the conference are collected in this series. An introduction summarizes (in heavily abbreviated form) the principal analytical conclusions emerging from the conference, together with the main policy recommendations put forward by participants….(More)”.