@inge and @MariaEuler - @Amelia suggested we reach out to Kate Sim who is doing interesting work around tech in the context of gender-based violence at the Oxford Internet Institute. It would be great if we could schedule a video chat to learn more about her work and see if/how she might be interested in participating. I am very very interested in bringing in people working in sextech and femtech for a deeper conversation as part of this workshop or one video call in the run up to it or even a separate event. What do you think?
Also, I contacted Abeba Birhane who is doing brilliant work spanning data ethics, embodied cognition and bias (see this aeon article she wrote) . It would be very interesting to have a conversation between her and @amelia exploring how SSNA/ quantified social anthropology methods and tools can help surface and address biases that affect how/which technological choices we make - and where possible, mitigating their consequences. Is this something you might be interested in @amelia and if yes, how could we go about making it happen? We have a bunch of different options to choose from spanning video chats, conversation threads on the platform all the way to organising an event at the RSA where I currently have a fellowship.
Ciao @rmdes so the festival site will be ready to go hopefully tomorrow, but if you view with web browser you can check it out already here https://festival.edgeryders.eu
As you see above the content is now taking shape. @MariaEuler will have the visuals for promoting the event in what, 4 days?
So I guess it is time to set things in motion comms-wise with Digityser. We said I would do a presentation on October 10 to introduce the festival methodology - is this still on? and if yes, what materials do you need from me to promote it?
timing-wise it’s great as the European Commission will come up with horizontal AI legislation (principles) in early 2020. Not an expert, but I reckon issues they will have to come to grips with could be
scope of the rules (what ‘AI’ systems should be covered, only top consumer/citizen-facing applications, or other/underlying infrastructure)
type of obligations (only transparency/documentation requirements?, what should they contain?)
How to differentiate, depending on scale (i.e. me building system affecting 10 people vs FB unleashing a new content ranking algorithm on a quarter of world population) and risk (system to distinguish which cat video I will be shown vs. decisions on employment, insurance, housing, predictive policing).
Could it be an idea to look at case studies at the event, with these questions in mind? For case studies itself, AlgorithmWatch produces yearly reports looking at automated decision-making in Europe (Jan 2019 report, ‘Automating Society - Taking Stock of Automated Decision-Making in the EU’). UK Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation is also carrying out a review of positive and negative effects of automated decision-making, first interim results just out I think. Interesting examples could be insurance branch, or the case of Austrian labour authority using it to decide whom of the unemployed to help in finding a new job (criterion: efficiency narrowly defined, i.e. those already have highest chance to find a new job in the first place…).
Apologies for lengthy post, but it’s my first here, so please cut me some slack
Yes I think this makes complete sense. Would you have time to pick a couple of case studies you find especially relevant and post them here?
In parallel what we do via the comms team is to ask the internet, and other participants in the workshop in for suggested case studies that we should include. And to get the conversation going around the three questions/challenges you outlined.
It depends on the exact definition of justice, perhaps. The computerization/mechanisation of the public sector has largely been driven by the hope that logical government (deterministic decisions, given certain input deterministic output) will make society more “just” and “equal” (i.e. a computer does not have the social sensitivity to discriminate, for instance, and even when it does - for instance through statistical short-comings - we can normally measure and assess the discrimination that occurs). But we are now half a century in to computerization - has it worked?
I think “lasagna-style” technologies, which are vertically separated as a matter of technology, are more likely to lead to an outcome of increased “justice”. Because I think of justice as something which guarantees to individuals freedom to act - commercially and socially - and this freedom can only be obtained if market entry barriers are low, or if technologies lend themselves to a multitude of entities cooperating on different levels. I’d prefer, for this reason, WiMAX and Wi-Fi over LTE systems and cellular networks, and I am for this reason cautious about 5G.
With my rudimentary understanding of Italian, the 15 proposals for justice would impact technology development - would they be advanced by technology development? I think governments across Europe - certainly in Sweden - are still very much stuck in the 1960s vision of computers-as-the-saviour-of-government-through-imposing-cold-hard-logic. I.e. the “fairness” our governments strive for is either being able to use technology against the governments’ own citizens (to find “cheaters”) or to have a “government machine” that is not able to distinguish the unique life-stories of either subjects (citizens) or staff (civil servants).
The idea is, as Alberto alludes to, that you have technologies which are layered in the sense that each layer can stand on its own two feet, takes care of its own security problems, etc. For networked technologies this is a main departure from old-style telecommunications networks which were assumed to be deployed and operated by the same entity.
I’m working on these forms of conceptualisations of technologies with a view to illustrating /where/ and /who/ does /what/ and /how/. The particular attachment concerns consumer worries with connected fridges - it’s a sketch/draft.
I was put in a pickle with the physical and datalink layers, because there’s actually a bit of information transmitted already at/for the physical layer. But ok.
the idea is to be able to put in where different features are/could be standardized, or perhaps even map to vendors/value chains. there’s a universe out there waiting to be OSI:fied.
For the purpose of this discussion/session we need to be quite specific so as to have a set of “case studies”. We pick a set of specific well documented stories/ incident where certain injustices manifested and map out the connections between the where/what/when/how of technologies involved…and the who/where/when/how of decision making mechanisms or processes involved.
The visuals you sent are a proposed way to approach/structure the discussion.
For the purpose of this discussion/session we need to be quite specific so as to have a set of “case studies”. We pick a set of specific well documented stories/ incident where certain injustices manifested and map out the connections between the where/what/when/how of technologies involved…and the who/where/when/how of decision making mechanisms or processes involved.
Ah, sorry. I posted the picture because it looks nice (to lighten up the mood). On the stories we need to document, I believe it’s easier to group stories by forum (where an event takes place), since it is the nature of the forum that determines what the future courses of actions are.
That said, OSI layer conceptualisations can be used to illustrate how different technologies relate to each other. Maybe a consideration for a later report? At the workshop stage focus could be on strategic issues more than graphics.
Delighted to get your input – if we go ahead with this, I’ll make sure you get a proper invitation. Your exact same point was made to me by @teirdes: Europe used to have a world leadership on P2P tech (Kazaa, Pirate Bay, early Skype…), but then it regulated its own tech bleeding edge out of existence. This issue deserves its own thread, but it does advocate taking a hard look at industrial tech policy in the EU… what do you think?
I am not sure what Julia is up to these days. I heard she did not run for a second mandate, which I interpret as being fed up with the whole dance. Perhaps you have other information?
I agree we need to get deep into the industrial tech policies, and overall competitive strategy design process (an awful lot of ill informed “me too” rages in EU since a decade or two) inevitably including the issue of lobbying… and I agree this investigation would be a dignified activity on its own… In reason of Paul KT & Haddad C 2019 (the last link in my previous post) however, I am not sure we can disentangle the two analyses too easily, since also your original enquiry was meant to inform future policy making… up for conversation about how to arrange the coordination of the efforts.
Concerning Julia, no… I have the same news as you, I guess… but my understanding is that she is fed up with the political side and EU parliament… not with the entire topic… and once anyone is as deep in it as she is, I cannot bring myself to believe she can simply turn away… it’s in her
Anyway a message would not hurt, if we were to go through with this…
I’m working on these forms of conceptualisations of technologies with a view to illustrating /where/ and /who/ does /what/ and /how/. The particular attachment concerns consumer worries with connected fridges - it’s a sketch/draft.
