The ethical imperative to identify and address data and intelligence asymmetries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stefaan Verhulst in AI & Society: “The insight that knowledge, resulting from having access to (privileged) information or data, is power is more relevant today than ever before. The data age has redefined the very notion of knowledge and information (as well as power), leading to a greater reliance on dispersed and decentralized datasets as well as to new forms of innovation and learning, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). As Thomas Piketty (among others) has shown, we live in an increasingly stratified world, and our society’s socio-economic asymmetries are often grafted onto data and information asymmetries. As we have documented elsewhere, data access is fundamentally linked to economic opportunity, improved governance, better science and citizen empowerment. The need to address data and information asymmetries—and their resulting inequalities of political and economic power—is therefore emerging as among the most urgent ethical challenges of our era, yet often not recognized as such.

Even as awareness grows of this imperative, society and policymakers lag in their understanding of the underlying issue. Just what are data asymmetries? How do they emerge, and what form do they take? And how do data asymmetries accelerate information and other asymmetries? What forces and power structures perpetuate or deepen these asymmetries, and vice versa? I argue that it is a mistake to treat this problem as homogenous. In what follows, I suggest the beginning of a taxonomy of asymmetries. Although closely related, each one emerges from a different set of contingencies, and each is likely to require different policy remedies. The focus of this short essay is to start outlining these different types of asymmetries. Further research could deepen and expand the proposed taxonomy as well help define solutions that are contextually appropriate and fit for purpose….(More)”.

Data Types, Data Doubts & Data Trusts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by João Marinotti: “Data is not monolithic. Nonetheless, the word is frequently used indiscriminately, referring to a large number of different concepts. It may refer to information writ large, or specifically to personally identifiable information, discrete digital files, trade secrets, and even to sets of AI-generated content. Yet each of these types of “data” require different governance regimes in commerce, in life, and in law. Despite this diversity, the singular concept of data trusts is promulgated as a solution to our collective data governance problems. Data trusts—meant to cover all of these types of data—are said to promote personal privacy, increase corporate transparency, facilitate the sharing of data, and even pave the way for the next generation of artificial intelligence. These anticipated benefits, however, require the body and flexibility of equitable trust law and its inherent fiduciary relationships. Unfortunately, American trust law does not allow for the existence of such general data trusts. If anything, the judicial, academic, and legislative confusion regarding data rights—or its status as property—demonstrates that discussions of data trusts may be ignoring a key element. Without first determining whether (or what kind of) data can be recognized as a trust res (i.e., as trust property) under existing law, it may be premature to accept data trusts as the private law solution to our data governance ills. If, on the other hand, the implementation of data trusts requires legislative intervention, its purported benefits must be analyzed in contrast to the myriad other new and evolving data governance frameworks that would similarly require legislation. By analyzing existing trust law and the difficulties of defining data rights, this essay highlights the urgent need to pursue doctrinally, legislatively, and technologically viable data governance strategies….(More)”.

Digitisation and Sovereignty in Humanitarian Space: Technologies, Territories and Tensions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Aaron Martin: “Debates are ongoing on the limits of – and possibilities for – sovereignty in the digital era. While most observers spotlight the implications of the Internet, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence/machine learning and advanced data analytics for the sovereignty of nation states, a critical yet under-examined question concerns what digital innovations mean for authority, power and control in the humanitarian sphere in which different rules, values and expectations are thought to apply. This forum brings together practitioners and scholars to explore both conceptually and empirically how digitisation and datafication in aid are (re)shaping notions of sovereign power in humanitarian space. The forum’s contributors challenge established understandings of sovereignty in new forms of digital humanitarian action. Among other focus areas, the forum draws attention to how cyber dependencies threaten international humanitarian organisations’ purported digital sovereignty. It also contests the potential of technologies like blockchain to revolutionise notions of sovereignty in humanitarian assistance and hypothesises about the ineluctable parasitic qualities of humanitarian technology. The forum concludes by proposing that digital technologies deployed in migration contexts might be understood as ‘sovereignty experiments’. We invite readers from scholarly, policy and practitioner communities alike to engage closely with these critical perspectives on digitisation and sovereignty in humanitarian space….(More)”.

The Role and Impact of the Right of Petition as an Instrument of Participatory Democracy in the European Union

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alberto Alemanno: “Petitioning represents the oldest, most accessible, permanent and general-purpose participatory mechanism for any individual who intends to enter into contact with the EU institutional apparatus. As such, the right to petition provides EU citizens and residents with a simple means of contacting the European institutions with complaints or requests for action in relation to “orphan” or “dormant” issues that fail to get the attention and action of other European Parliament committees or EU institutions, in particular concerning problems related to the application of EU law at the national and local level. The right to petition plays different and complementary functions, from administrative and political oversight over the EU Commission and the Member States to legislative agenda-setting, while offering a unique mechanism of representation for individuals and minorities – such as non-EU citizens, migrants and minors – who currently lack such representation. There are, however, still some major structural issues over effectively ensuring the exercise of the right to petition and the full realisation of its multiple democratic functions within the current EU participatory infrastructure. It does so at time the EU undergoes a major democratic exercise – the Conference on the Future of Europe – that, for the first time since 2007, may lead to institutional reform and put to test democratic innovations, such as citizens’ assemblies at the transnational level. Against this background, this study identifies and systematises the EU petition system’s major flaws – focusing on its design, accountability and actual practice – in order to provide a set of recommendations on how to strengthen the role and impact of the right of petition as the privileged instrument of EU participatory democracy…(More)”.

Identifying and interpreting government successes: An assessment tool for classroom use

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Scott Douglas, Paul ‘t Hart, and Judith Van Erp: “Journalists, politicians, watchdog institutions, and public administration scholars devote considerable energy to identifying and dissecting failures in government. Studies and casestudies of policy, organizational, and institutional failures in the public sector figure prominently in public administration curriculums and classrooms. Such a focus on failures provides students with cautionary tales and theoretical tools for understanding how things can go badly wrong. However, students are provided with less insights and tools when it comes to identifying and understanding instances of success. To address this imbalance, this article offers students a framework to systematically identify, comprehensively assess and carefully interpret instances of successful public governance. The three-stage design of the funnel introduces students to relevant debates and literatures about meaningful public outcomes, the prudent use of public power, and the ability to sustain performance over time. The articles also discuss how this framework can be used effectively in classroom settings, helping teachers to stimulate reflection on the key challenges of assessing and learning from successes…(More)”.

Big data, computational social science, and other recent innovations in social network analysis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by David Tindall, John McLevey, Yasmin Koop-Monteiro, Alexander Graham: “While sociologists have studied social networks for about one hundred years, recent developments in data, technology, and methods of analysis provide opportunities for social network analysis (SNA) to play a prominent role in the new research world of big data and computational social science (CSS). In our review, we focus on four broad topics: (1) Collecting Social Network Data from the Web, (2) Non-traditional and Bipartite/Multi-mode Networks, including Discourse and Semantic Networks, and Social-Ecological Networks, (3) Recent Developments in Statistical Inference for Networks, and (4) Ethics in Computational Network Research…(More)”

Broadband Internet and social capital

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Andrea Geraci, Mattia Nardotto, Tommaso Reggiani and FabioSabatini: “We study the impact of broadband penetration on social capital in the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits a technological feature of the telecommunication infrastructure that generated substantial variation in the quality of Internet access across households. The speed of a domestic connection rapidly decays with the distance of a user’s line from the network’s node serving the area. Merging information on the topology of the network with geocoded longitudinal data about individual social capital from 1997 to 2017, we show that access to fast Internet caused a significant decline in civic and political engagement. Overall, our results suggest that broadband penetration crowded out several dimensions of social capital….(More)”.

Using Competitors’ Data – A Role for Competition Law? Some Thoughts on the Amazon Marketplace Case

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Iga Malobecka: “Based on the Commission’s investigation into Amazon’s practices, the article analyses whether Amazon’s use of sensitive data from independent retailers who sell via its marketplace may raise anticompetitive concerns and, if so, how they should be tackled, in particular, whether competition law is the right tool to address these concerns. Amazon’s conduct, which is being investigated by the Commission, does not easily fit in with well-established theories of harm. Therefore, it is proposed to develop new theories of harm that would be specifically tailored to challenges of digital markets and online platforms’ business models. Amazon’s conduct could be regarded as a forced free-riding, predatory copying, abusive leveraging or self- preferencing. It is also argued that some of the competition concerns that may arise from the use of competitors’ data by online intermediation platforms such as Amazon could be more efficiently tackled by introducing a regulation, such as the Digital Markets Act…(More)”.

Publicizing Corporate Secrets for Public Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christopher Morten: “Federal regulatory agencies in the United States hold a treasure trove of valuable information essential to a functional society. Yet little of this immense and nominally “public” resource is accessible to the public. That worrying phenomenon is particularly true for the valuable information that agencies hold on powerful private actors. Corporations regularly shield vast swaths of the information they share with federal regulatory agencies from public view, claiming that the information contains legally protected trade secrets (or other proprietary “confidential commercial information”). Federal agencies themselves have largely acceded to these claims and even fueled them, by construing restrictively various doctrines of law, including trade secrecy law, freedom of information law, and constitutional law. Today, these laws—and fear of these laws—have reduced to a trickle the flow of information that the public can access. This should not and need not be the case.

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that trade secrecy law restricts public agencies’ power to publicize private businesses’ secrets. In fact, federal agencies, and regulatory agencies especially, have long held and still hold statutory and constitutional authority to obtain and divulge otherwise secret information on private actors, when doing so serves the public interest. For many regulatory agencies, that authority extends even to bona fide trade secrets. In an age of “informational capitalism,” this disclosure authority makes U.S. federal regulatory agencies uniquely valuable—and perhaps uniquely dangerous. Building on recent work that explores this right in the context of drugs and vaccines, and drawing heavily from scholarship in privacy and information law, the article proposes a practical framework that regulators can use to publicize secret information in a way that maximizes public benefit and minimizes private harm. Rather than endorse unconstrained information disclosure—transparency for transparency’s sake—this article instead proposes controlled “information publicity,” in which regulators cultivate carefully bounded “gardens” of secret information. Within these gardens, agencies admit only certain users and certain uses of information. Drawing on existing but largely overlooked real-world examples, the article shows that regulators can effectively and selectively publicize trade secret information to noncommercial users while thwarting commercial uses. Regulators can protect trade secrets’ integrity vis-à-vis competitors while simultaneously unlocking new, socially valuable uses…(More)”.

Mapping of exposed water tanks and swimming pools based on aerial images can help control dengue

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo: “Brazilian researchers have developed a computer program that locates swimming pools and rooftop water tanks in aerial photographs with the aid of artificial intelligence to help identify areas vulnerable to infestation by Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue, zika, chikungunya and yellow fever. 

The innovation, which can also be used as a public policy tool for dynamic socio-economic mapping of urban areas, resulted from research and development work by professionals at the University of São Paulo (USP), the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and the São Paulo State Department of Health’s Endemic Control Superintendence (SUCEN), as part of a project supported by FAPESP. An article about it is published in the journal PLOS ONE. 

“Our work initially consisted of creating a model based on aerial images and computer science to detect water tanks and pools, and to use them as a socio-economic indicator,” said Francisco Chiaravalloti Neto, last author of the article. He is a professor in the Epidemiology Department at USP’s School of Public Health (FSP), with a first degree in engineering. 

As the article notes, previous research had already shown that dengue tends to be most prevalent in deprived urban areas, so that prevention of dengue, zika and other diseases transmitted by the mosquito can be made considerably more effective by use of a relatively dynamic socio-economic mapping model, especially given the long interval between population censuses in Brazil (ten years or more). 

“This is one of the first steps in a broader project,” Chiaravalloti Neto said. Among other aims, he and his team plan to detect other elements of the images and quantify real infestation rates in specific areas so as to be able to refine and validate the model. 

“We want to create a flow chart that can be used in different cities to pinpoint at-risk areas without the need for inspectors to call on houses, buildings and other breeding sites, as this is time-consuming and a waste of the taxpayer’s money,” he added…(More)”.