To Stop Tariffs, Trump Demands Opioid Data That Doesn’t Yet Exist

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Josh Katz and Margot Sanger-Katz: “One month ago, President Trump agreed to delay tariffs on Canada and Mexico after the two countries agreed to help stem the flow of fentanyl into the United States. On Tuesday, the Trump administration imposed the tariffs anyway, saying that the countries had failed to do enough — and claiming that tariffs would be lifted only when drug deaths fall.

But the administration has seemingly established an impossible standard. Real-time, national data on fentanyl overdose deaths does not exist, so there is no way to know whether Canada and Mexico were able to “adequately address the situation” since February, as the White House demanded.

“We need to see material reduction in autopsied deaths from opioids,” said Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, in an interview on CNBC on Tuesday, indicating that such a decline would be a precondition to lowering tariffs. “But you’ve seen it — it has not been a statistically relevant reduction of deaths in America.”

In a way, Mr. Lutnick is correct that there is no evidence that overdose deaths have fallen in the last month — since there is no such national data yet. His stated goal to measure deaths again in early April will face similar challenges.

But data through September shows that fentanyl deaths had already been falling at a statistically significant rate for months, causing overall drug deaths to drop at a pace unlike any seen in more than 50 years of recorded drug overdose mortality data.

The declines can be seen in provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which compiles death records from states, which in turn collect data from medical examiners and coroners in cities and towns. Final national data generally takes more than a year to produce. But, as the drug overdose crisis has become a major public health emergency in recent years, the C.D.C. has been publishing monthly data, with some holes, at around a four-month lag…(More)”.

Commerce Secretary’s Comments Raise Fears of Interference in Federal Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Ben Casselman and Colby Smith: “Comments from a member of President Trump’s cabinet over the weekend have renewed concerns that the new administration could seek to interfere with federal statistics — especially if they start to show that the economy is slipping into a recession.

In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, suggested that he planned to change the way the government reports data on gross domestic product in order to remove the impact of government spending.

“You know that governments historically have messed with G.D.P.,” he said. “They count government spending as part of G.D.P. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what Mr. Lutnick meant. The basic definition of gross domestic product is widely accepted internationally and has been unchanged for decades. It tallies consumer spending, private-sector investment, net exports, and government investment and spending to arrive at a broad measure of all goods and services produced in a country.The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of Mr. Lutnick’s department, already produces a detailed breakdown of G.D.P. into its component parts. Many economists focus on a measure — known as “final sales to private domestic purchasers” — that excludes government spending and is often seen as a better indicator of underlying demand in the economy. That measure has generally shown stronger growth in recent quarters than overall G.D.P. figures.

In recent weeks, however, there have been mounting signs elsewhere that the economy could be losing momentum. Consumer spending fell unexpectedly in January, applications for unemployment insurance have been creeping upward, and measures of housing construction and home sales have turned down. A forecasting model from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta predicts that G.D.P. could contract sharply in the first quarter of the year, although most private forecasters still expect modest growth.

Cuts to federal spending and the federal work force could act as a further drag on economic growth in coming months. Removing federal spending from G.D.P. calculations, therefore, could obscure the impact of the administration’s policies…(More)”.

AI could supercharge human collective intelligence in everything from disaster relief to medical research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Hao Cui and Taha Yasseri: “Imagine a large city recovering from a devastating hurricane. Roads are flooded, the power is down, and local authorities are overwhelmed. Emergency responders are doing their best, but the chaos is massive.

AI-controlled drones survey the damage from above, while intelligent systems process satellite images and data from sensors on the ground and air to identify which neighbourhoods are most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, AI-equipped robots are deployed to deliver food, water and medical supplies into areas that human responders can’t reach. Emergency teams, guided and coordinated by AI and the insights it produces, are able to prioritise their efforts, sending rescue squads where they’re needed most.

This is no longer the realm of science fiction. In a recent paper published in the journal Patterns, we argue that it’s an emerging and inevitable reality.

Collective intelligence is the shared intelligence of a group or groups of people working together. Different groups of people with diverse skills, such as firefighters and drone operators, for instance, work together to generate better ideas and solutions. AI can enhance this human collective intelligence, and transform how we approach large-scale crises. It’s a form of what’s called hybrid collective intelligence.

Instead of simply relying on human intuition or traditional tools, experts can use AI to process vast amounts of data, identify patterns and make predictions. By enhancing human decision-making, AI systems offer faster and more accurate insights – whether in medical research, disaster response, or environmental protection.

AI can do this, by for example, processing large datasets and uncovering insights that would take much longer for humans to identify. AI can also get involved in physical tasks. In manufacturing, AI-powered robots can automate assembly lines, helping improve efficiency and reduce downtime.

Equally crucial is information exchange, where AI enhances the flow of information, helping human teams coordinate more effectively and make data-driven decisions faster. Finally, AI can act as social catalysts to facilitate more effective collaboration within human teams or even help build hybrid teams of humans and machines working alongside one another…(More)”.

China wants tech companies to monetize data, but few are buying in

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Lizzi C. Lee: “Chinese firms generate staggering amounts of data daily, from ride-hailing trips to online shopping transactions. A recent policy allowed Chinese companies to record data as assets on their balance sheets, the first such regulation in the world, paving the way for data to be traded in a marketplace and boost company valuations. 

But uptake has been slow. When China Unicom, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, reported its earnings recently, eagle-eyed accountants spotted that the company had listed 204 million yuan ($28 million) in data assets on its balance sheet. The state-owned operator was the first Chinese tech giant to take advantage of the Ministry of Finance’s new corporate data policy, which permits companies to classify data as inventory or intangible assets. 

“No other country is trying to do this on a national level. It could drive global standards of data management and accounting,” Ran Guo, an affiliated researcher at the Asia Society Policy Institute specializing in data governance in China, told Rest of World. 

In 2023 alone, China generated 32.85 zettabytes — more than 27% of the global total, according to a government survey. To put that in perspective, storing this volume on standard 1-terabyte hard drives would require more than 32 billion units….Tech companies that are data-rich are well-positioned tobenefit from logging data as assets to turn the formalized assets into tradable commodities, said Guo. But companies must first invest in secure storage and show that the data is legally obtained in order to meet strict government rules on data security. 

“This can be costly and complex,” he said. “Not all data qualifies as an asset, and companies must meet stringent requirements.” 

Even China Unicom, a state-owned enterprise, is likely complying with the new policy due to political pressure rather than economic incentive, said Guo, who conducted field research in China last year on the government push for data resource development. The telecom operator did not respond to a request for comment. 

Private technology companies in China, meanwhile, tend to be protective of their data. A Chinese government statement in 2022 pushed private enterprises to “open up their data.” But smaller firms could lack the resources to meet the stringent data storage and consumer protection standards, experts and Chinese tech company employees told Rest of World...(More)”.

Open Data Under Attack: How to Find Data and Why It Is More Important Than Ever

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jessica Hilburn: “This land was made for you and me, and so was the data collected with our taxpayer dollars. Open data is data that is accessible, shareable, and able to be used by anyone. While any person, company, or organization can create and publish open data, the federal and state governments are by far the largest providers of open data.

President Barack Obama codified the importance of government-created open data in his May 9, 2013, executive order as a part of the Open Government Initiative. This initiative was meant to “ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration” in furtherance of strengthening democracy and increasing efficiency. The initiative also launched Project Open Data (since replaced by the Resources.data.gov platform), which documented best practices and offered tools so government agencies in every sector could open their data and contribute to the collective public good. As has been made readily apparent, the era of public good through open data is now under attack.

Immediately after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders, many of which targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for removal in federal government operations. Unsurprisingly, a large number of federal datasets include information dealing with diverse populations, equitable services, and inclusion of marginalized groups. Other datasets deal with information on topics targeted by those with nefarious agendas—vaccination rates, HIV/AIDS, and global warming, just to name a few. In the wake of these executive orders, datasets and website pages with blacklisted topics, tags, or keywords suddenly disappeared—more than 8,000 of them. In addition, President Trump fired the National Archivist, and top National Archives and Records Administration officials are being ousted, putting the future of our collective history at enormous risk.

While it is common practice to archive websites and information in the transition between administrations, it is unprecedented for the incoming administration to cull data altogether. In response, unaffiliated organizations are ramping up efforts to separately archive data and information for future preservation and access. Web scrapers are being used to grab as much data as possible, but since this method is automated, data requiring a login or bot challenger (like a captcha) is left behind. The future information gap that researchers will be left to grapple with could be catastrophic for progress in crucial areas, including weather, natural disasters, and public health. Though there are efforts to put out the fire, such as the federal order to restore certain resources, the people’s library is burning. The losses will be permanently felt…Data is a weapon, whether we like it or not. Free and open access to information—about democracy, history, our communities, and even ourselves—is the foundation of library service. It is time for anyone who continues to claim that libraries are not political to wake up before it is too late. Are libraries still not political when the Pentagon barred library access for tens of thousands of American children attending Pentagon schools on military bases while they examined and removed supposed “radical indoctrination” books? Are libraries still not political when more than 1,000 unique titles are being targeted for censorship annually, and soft censorship through preemptive restriction to avoid controversy is surely occurring and impossible to track? It is time for librarians and library workers to embrace being political.

In a country where the federal government now denies that certain people even exist, claims that children are being indoctrinated because they are being taught the good and bad of our nation’s history, and rescinds support for the arts, humanities, museums, and libraries, there is no such thing as neutrality. When compassion and inclusion are labeled the enemy and the diversity created by our great American experiment is lambasted as a social ill, claiming that libraries are neutral or apolitical is not only incorrect, it’s complicit. To update the quote, information is the weapon in the war of ideas. Librarians are the stewards of information. We don’t want to be the Americans who protested in 1933 at the first Nazi book burnings and then, despite seeing the early warning signs of catastrophe, retreated into the isolation of their own concerns. The people’s library is on fire. We must react before all that is left of our profession is ash…(More)”.

Combine AI with citizen science to fight poverty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nature Editorial: “Of the myriad applications of artificial intelligence (AI), its use in humanitarian assistance is underappreciated. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Togo’s government used AI tools to identify tens of thousands of households that needed money to buy food, as Nature reports in a News Feature this week. Typically, potential recipients of such payments would be identified when they apply for welfare schemes, or through household surveys of income and expenditure. But such surveys were not possible during the pandemic, and the authorities needed to find alternative means to help those in need. Researchers used machine learning to comb through satellite imagery of low-income areas and combined that knowledge with data from mobile-phone networks to find eligible recipients, who then received a regular payment through their phones. Using AI tools in this way was a game-changer for the country.Can AI help beat poverty? Researchers test ways to aid the poorest people

Now, with the pandemic over, researchers and policymakers are continuing to see how AI methods can be used in poverty alleviation. This needs comprehensive and accurate data on the state of poverty in households. For example, to be able to help individual families, authorities need to know about the quality of their housing, their children’s diets, their education and whether families’ basic health and medical needs are being met. This information is typically obtained from in-person surveys. However, researchers have seen a fall in response rates when collecting these data.

Missing data

Gathering survey-based data can be especially challenging in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In-person surveys are costly to do and often miss some of the most vulnerable, such as refugees, people living in informal housing or those who earn a living in the cash economy. Some people are reluctant to participate out of fear that there could be harmful consequences — deportation in the case of undocumented migrants, for instance. But unless their needs are identified, it is difficult to help them.Leveraging the collaborative power of AI and citizen science for sustainable development

Could AI offer a solution? The short answer is, yes, although with caveats. The Togo example shows how AI-informed approaches helped communities by combining knowledge of geographical areas of need with more-individual data from mobile phones. It’s a good example of how AI tools work well with granular, household-level data. Researchers are now homing in on a relatively untapped source for such information: data collected by citizen scientists, also known as community scientists. This idea deserves more attention and more funding.

Thanks to technologies such as smartphones, Wi-Fi and 4G, there has been an explosion of people in cities, towns and villages collecting, storing and analysing their own social and environmental data. In Ghana, for example, volunteer researchers are collecting data on marine litter along the coastline and contributing this knowledge to their country’s official statistics…(More)”.

Farmers Sue Over Deletion of Climate Data From Government Websites

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Karen Zraick: “Organic farmers and environmental groups sued the Agriculture Department on Monday over its scrubbing of references to climate change from its website.

The department had ordered staff to take down pages focused on climate change on Jan. 30, according to the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Within hours, it said, information started disappearing.

That included websites containing data sets, interactive tools and funding information that farmers and researchers relied on for planning and adaptation projects, according to the lawsuit.

At the same time, the department also froze funding that had been promised to businesses and nonprofits through conservation and climate programs. The purge then “removed critical information about these programs from the public record, denying farmers access to resources they need to advocate for funds they are owed,” it said.

The Agriculture Department referred questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit was filed by lawyers from Earthjustice, based in San Francisco, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, based in Binghamton; the Natural Resources Defense Council, based in New York; and the Environmental Working Group, based in Washington. The latter two groups relied on the department website for their research and advocacy, the lawsuit said.

Peter Lehner, a lawyer for Earthjustice, said the pages being purged were crucial for farmers facing risks linked to climate change, including heat waves, droughts, floods, extreme weather and wildfires. The websites had contained information about how to mitigate dangers and adopt new agricultural techniques and strategies. Long-term weather data and trends are valuable in the agriculture industry for planning, research and business strategy.

“You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away,” Mr. Lehner said…(More)”.

A.I. Is Prompting an Evolution, Not an Extinction, for Coders

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Steve Lohr: “John Giorgi uses artificial intelligence to make artificial intelligence.

The 29-year-old computer scientist creates software for a health care start-up that records and summarizes patient visits for doctors, freeing them from hours spent typing up clinical notes.

To do so, Mr. Giorgi has his own timesaving helper: an A.I. coding assistant. He taps a few keys and the software tool suggests the rest of the line of code. It can also recommend changes, fetch data, identify bugs and run basic tests. Even though the A.I. makes some mistakes, it saves him up to an hour many days.

“I can’t imagine working without it now,” Mr. Giorgi said.

That sentiment is increasingly common among software developers, who are at the forefront of adopting A.I. agents, assistant programs tailored to help employees do their jobs in fields including customer service and manufacturing. The rapid improvement of the technology has been accompanied by dire warnings that A.I. could soon automate away millions of jobs — and software developers have been singled out as prime targets.

But the outlook for software developers is more likely evolution than extinction, according to experienced software engineers, industry analysts and academics. For decades, better tools have automated some coding tasks, but the demand for software and the people who make it has only increased.

A.I., they say, will accelerate that trend and level up the art and craft of software design.

“The skills software developers need will change significantly, but A.I. will not eliminate the need for them,” said Arnal Dayaratna, an analyst at IDC, a technology research firm. “Not anytime soon anyway.”

The outlook for software engineers offers a window into the impact that generative A.I. — the kind behind chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT — is likely to have on knowledge workers across the economy, from doctors and lawyers to marketing managers and financial analysts. Predictions about the technology’s consequences vary widely, from wiping out whole swaths of the work force to hyper-charging productivity as an elixir for economic growth…(More)”.

The New Control Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Jon Askonas: “Let me tell you two stories about the Internet. The first story is so familiar it hardly warrants retelling. It goes like this. The Internet is breaking the old powers of the state, the media, the church, and every other institution. It is even breaking society itself. By subjecting their helpless users to ever more potent algorithms to boost engagement, powerful platforms distort reality and disrupt our politics. YouTube radicalizes young men into misogynists. TikTok turns moderate progressives into Hamas supporters. Facebook boosts election denialism; or it censors stories doubting the safety of mRNA vaccines. On the world stage, the fate of nations hinges on whether Twitter promotes color revolutions, WeChat censors Hong Kong protesters, and Facebook ads boost the Brexit campaign. The platforms are producing a fractured society: diversity of opinion is running amok, consensus is dead.

The second story is very different. In the 2023 essay “The age of average,” Alex Murrell recounts a project undertaken in the 1990s by Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. The artists commissioned a public affairs firm to poll over a thousand Americans on their ideal painting: the colors they liked, the subjects they gravitated toward, and so forth. Using the aggregate data, the artists created a painting, and they repeated this procedure in a number of other countries, exhibiting the final collection as an art exhibition called The People’s Choice. What they found, by and large, was not individual and national difference but the opposite: shocking uniformity — landscapes with a few animals and human figures with trees and a blue-hued color palette..(more)”.

In Online Democracy, Fun Is Imperative

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Joe Mathews: “Governments around the world, especially those at the subnational and local levels, find themselves stuck in a vise. Planetary problems like climate change, disease, and technological disruption are not being addressed adequately by national governments. Everyday people, whose lives have been disrupted by those planetary problems, press the governments closer to them to step up and protect them. But those governments lack the technical capacity and popular trust to act effectively against bigger problems.

To build trust and capacity, many governments are moving governance into the digital world and asking their residents to do more of the work of government themselves. Some cities, provinces, and political institutions have tried to build digital platforms and robust digital environments where residents can improve service delivery and make government policy themselves.

However, most of these experiments have been failures. The trouble is that most of these platforms cannot keep the attention of the people who are supposed to use them. Too few of the platforms are designed to make online engagement compelling. So, figuring out how to make online engagement in government fun is actually a serious question for governments seeking to work more closely with their people.

What does fun look like in this sphere? I first witnessed a truly fun and engaging digital tool for citizen governance in Rome in 2018. While running a democracy conference with Mayor Virginia Raggi and her team, they were always on their phones, and not just to answer emails or texts. They were constantly on a digital environment called Rousseau.

Rousseau was named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century philosopher and author of The Social Contract. In that 1762 book, Rousseau argued that city-states (like his hometown of Geneva) were more naturally suited to democracy than nation-states (especially big nations like France). He also wrote that the people themselves, not elected representatives, were the best rulers through what we today call direct democracy…(More)”.