AUGUST 2021

Spotlight on digital risks and human security in Afghanistan, perils of biometrics data, digital era of humanitarian action in Haiti and more…

For more resources on Technology, Bias, and Racial Justice look at our

Special Edition Newsletter

curated by 

Amanda Luz, Jeremy Pineda, Loren Crone, Stephanie Hilton

BY AI FOR PEACE

AI FOR PEACE New Blog Entry: Artificial Intelligence for good - How to predict conflict before it’s too late, by Ishanee Chanda

“Currently, humanitarian assistance often arrives well after a developing crisis turns into a full-fledged catastrophe. Aid workers are only dispatched once events have reached a certain threshold, and resources are distributed based on need and capacity. Artificial intelligence already plays some role in aid and response; during natural disasters, responders may use AI to examine satellite imagery and drones to geotag areas of relief, collect data, and estimate funding requirements. Relief agencies use AI to increase the efficiency of procurement processes and to help responders on the ground communicate with beneficiaries as needed. But what if data-driven AI could be used to predict humanitarian crises before they even began?” Read more here.

AI FOR PEACE New Blog Entry: Promoting Peace through Modern data warehousing solutions, by Yared Hurisa, AI for Peace Chief Data Officer  

“Nowadays virtually all organizations want to cope with the amount of data generated everywhere that is exponentially increasing from time to time. On the other hand, humanity is facing unprecedented challenges due to pressing issues such as climate change, conflict, and forced displacement that negatively affect the lives and well-being of societies. This creates the need for a reliable information system that can manage big data as well as support timely decisions for combating global problems.” Read more here.

THIS MONTH’S BEST READS 

The Taliban Have Seized U.S. Military Biometrics Devices, The Intercept, 18 August 2021

THE TALIBAN HAVE seized U.S. military biometrics devices that could aid in the identification of Afghans who assisted coalition forces, current and former military officials have told The Intercept. The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, were seized last week during the Taliban’s offensive, according to a Joint Special Operations Command official and three former U.S. military personnel, all of whom worried that sensitive data they contain could be used by the Taliban. HIIDE devices contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information, and are used to access large centralized databases. It’s unclear how much of the U.S. military’s biometric database on the Afghan population has been compromised.

Today’s Taliban uses sophisticated social media practices that rarely violate the rules, TWP, 18 August 2021

For a group that espouses ancient moral codes, the Afghan Taliban has used strikingly sophisticated social media tactics to build political momentum and, now that they’re in power, to make a public case that they’re ready to lead a modern nation state after nearly 20 years of war. In accounts swelling across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — and in group chats on apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram — the messaging from Taliban supporters typically challenges the West’s dominant image of the group as intolerant, vicious and bent on revenge, while staying within the evolving boundaries of taste and content that tech companies use to police user behavior.

How social media is dealing with the Taliban takeover, CNN, 17 August 2021           

On Tuesday, Facebook (FB) reiterated its ban on accounts praising, supporting, or representing the Taliban from its platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram, and said that it would remove "accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban. The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies," a company spokesperson said. Facebook designates "dangerous organizations" into three tiers, with the first one being subjected to "the most extensive enforcement." Entities in tier 1 include terrorist, hate, and criminal organizations.

Afghans scramble to delete digital history, evade biometrics, Reuters, 17 August 2021

Thousands of Afghans struggling to ensure the physical safety of their families after the Taliban took control of the country have an additional worry: that biometric databases and their own digital history can be used to track and target them. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of "chilling" curbs on human rights and violations against women and girls, and Amnesty International on Monday said thousands of Afghans - including academics, journalists and activists - were "at serious risk of Taliban reprisals". After years of a push to digitise databases in the country, and introduce digital identity cards and biometrics for voting, activists warn these technologies can be used to target and attack vulnerable groups.

Afghans are being evacuated via WhatsApp, Google Forms, or by any means possible, MIT TR, 17 August 2021

The sudden collapse of Afghanistan's government has led to a frantic attempt to accelerate online relief and evacuation efforts. These attempts, organized largely via Google Forms, WhatsApp and private social media groups, are trying to fill the void left by the US government's failure to protect vulnerable Afghans. It could be the only lifeline for many trying to flee the country—but at the same time it is not without risk, as observers fear crowdsourced information could be used by the Taliban to identify the very people in need of rescue.

In Haiti, A New Era of Disaster Response, Direct Relief, 18 August 2021

“Big data analysis has gotten much faster,” Schroeder said, noting that, within days of the earthquake, he has been able to get high-resolution satellite imagery, social media-based data showing population movement, damage assessments from the EU, geocoded news updates, and a landslide risk analysis. With these resources, Schroeder and his team have created maps with a plethora of data, enabling response organizations and coordinating groups to deploy their resources to areas where they’ll have the most significant impact.

The future is now: artificial intelligence and anticipatory humanitarian action, ICRC, 19 August 2021

As the world faces simultaneous disasters and burgeoning risks, humanitarian actors need to develop more efficient ways of delivering aid to vulnerable populations. One current trend involves the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to process large amounts of data quickly to inform – and even autonomously undertake – decision-making processes. While these processes have the potential to facilitate faster and better anticipatory humanitarian action, they can pose unforeseen challenges if left unregulated and unchecked.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Platforms Want To Be Utilities, Self-Govern Like Empires. EFF, 3 August 2021

We’ve entrusted these companies with our sensitive data, from family photos to finances to correspondence. We’ve let them take over our communities, from medical and bereavement support groups to little league and service organization forums. We’ve bought trillions of dollars’ worth of media from them, locked in proprietary formats that can’t be played back without their ongoing cooperation. These services often work great...but they fail very, very badly. Tech giants can run servers to support hundreds of millions or billions of users - but they either can’t or won’t create equally user-centric procedures for suspending or terminating those users.

Measuring destruction: Tracking war damage with AI, TechMonitor, 5 August 2021

Measuring this destruction reveals more than the history of a given conflict. By analysing high-resolution satellite imagery for signs of war damage, international aid agencies can identify which neighborhoods are most affected by the conflict, and where best to deploy limited resources. Currently, however, this analysis requires manual tagging of photo sequences, a laborious and costly undertaking. That may soon change. In a recent study, a combined team from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the Institute of Economic Analysis at the Spanish National Research Council and Chapman University, California successfully automated this process for the analysis of heavy weaponry impacts – with profound implications for the surveillance of conflict zones for humanitarian ends.

Social media: A tool for peace or conflict? SIPRI, 20 August 2021

At the 2021 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development researchers, policymakers, tech companies and civil society organizations had an opportunity to explore how social media can be harnessed for peacebuilding purposes and to assess policy responses to harmful online disinformation campaigns. This Topical Backgrounder is inspired by these discussions, particularly on the Janus-faced nature of social media. It makes four recommendations—one each for peacebuilding practitioners, policymakers, social media companies and citizens—to protect peace, democratic institutions and people’s welfare.

Embedding Gender in International Humanitarian Law: Is Artificial Intelligence Up to the Task? Just Security, 27 August 2021

During armed conflict, unequal power relations and structural disadvantages derived from gender dynamics are exacerbated. There has been increased recognition of these dynamics during the last several decades, particularly in the context of sexual and gender-based violence in conflict, as exemplified for example in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. Though initiatives like this resolution are a positive advancement towards the recognition of discrimination against women and structural disadvantages that they suffer from during armed conflict, other aspects of armed conflict, including, notably, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for targeting purposes, have remained resistant to insights related to gender. This is particularly problematic in the operational aspect of international humanitarian law (IHL), which contains rules on targeting in armed conflict.

ICYMI

Stabilization and digital dialogue for Myanmar – stepping back from the brink of civil war, Ifimes, 13 July 2021

International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES)[1] from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, Balkans and also around the world. Matthias E. Leitner is Senior Adviser/International Coordinator with ICSVE Center Washington, DC (USA), based in Berlin (Germany). In his comprehensive analysis entitled “Stabilization and digital dialogue for Myanmar – stepping back from the brink of civil war” he is analyzing the current situation in Myanmar and importance of inclusive civic dialogue, which can help reduce tensions through leveraging communications technology for digital grass-roots engagement and could also boost human capital for addressing longer-term challenges, including the impact of climate change and the Pandemic.  

AI helps scour video archives for evidence of human-rights abuses, The Economist, 5 June 2021

Thanks especially to ubiquitous camera-phones, today’s wars have been filmed more than any in history. Consider the growing archives of Mnemonic, a Berlin charity that preserves video that purports to document war crimes and other violations of human rights. If played nonstop, Mnemonic’s collection of video from Syria’s decade-long war would run until 2061. Mnemonic also holds seemingly bottomless archives of video from conflicts in Sudan and Yemen. Even greater amounts of potentially relevant additional footage await review online.

THIS MONTH’S REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS

Strategy For the Digital Transformation of UN Peacekeeping, UN, August 2021

Digital technologies are taking on a prominent and ever more complex role in the conflict arena. They are shaping conflict environments and influencing the behaviours and actions of conflict actors. Digital technologies give rise to new risks but also present new opportunities to improve the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations and the safety and security of peacekeepers. The vision for deeper internal capacities and exposure to new technologies is consistent with the Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative; the A4P Plus (A4P+) priorities of 2021 emphasise the need for innovative, data-driven, and technology-enabled peacekeeping. 

AI Accidents: An Emerging Threat - What Could Happen and What to Do, July 2021

As modern machine learning systems become more widely used, the potential costs of malfunctions grow. This policy brief describes how trends we already see today—both in newly deployed artificial intelligence systems and in older technologies—show how damaging the AI accidents of the future could be. It describes a wide range of hypothetical but realistic scenarios to illustrate the risks of AI accidents and offers concrete policy suggestions to reduce these risks.

THIS MONTH’S WEBINARS AND CONFERENCES

SNF Nostos Conference: Humanity and Artificial Intelligence, 26-27 August 2021

SNF Nostos (previously known as Summer Nostos Festival) is an international, multidimensional festival bursting with avant-garde art, scintillating conversation, daring ideas, irresistible music, moving dance, delightful performances, participatory entertainment, and lively sports activities for visitors of all ages.

Every summer, SNF Nostos invites us all to get together at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC). The SNFCC, an open public space that thousands of people have made their own, is the perfect meeting spot to share experiences and create new memories that will have us looking forward to next year’s SNF Nostos as soon as this year’s has ended.

AfP’s Tech4Peace Series: Introductory Workshop on GIS for Peacebuilding, 5 August 2021

Digital technology has great capacity to visualize, conceptualize, and address violence and conflict in new and innovative ways.  Technology is a force-multiplier, allowing data developers, users, and policymakers innovative ways to enhance and accelerate our peacebuilding work. When it comes to monitoring and evaluation, the use of geographic information systems (GIS) has great potential as a peacebuilding support tool to identify, track, and map armed conflict, violence, displaced populations, and ongoing human rights abuses. Join us for an introductory workshop with the Data Science for Sustainable Development (DSSD) team to learn about how to use and apply GIS and data science in your peacebuilding programming.

Peacebuilding Responses to Online Harm: New Research on Social Media's Challenges, 19 August 2021

Where does most violent online content occur? How do people interact with it—and why do some engage its perpetrators? Moreover, how do we understand social media dynamics in a particular country context? What are the attributes that make it dangerous—or that make it a tool for peacebuilding? On August 17th, the Digital Peacebuilding Community of Practice and representatives of Search for Common Ground (SFCG) and Mercy Corps presented findings from their new research projects.

THIS MONTH’S PODCAST CHOICE 

TECH TONIC - AI with military characteristics – 16 August 2021

Last year, the Pentagon watched closely as a human fighter pilot lost to an AI-powered adversary in a simulated dogfight. The US military is working to innovate faster as technology changes the nature of warfare. But many worry it has already fallen behind its main adversary, China. What does AI mean for military might, and how are debates over autonomous weapons unfolding in diplomatic backchannels? In the final episode of this season's Tech Tonic, FT innovation editor John Thornhill is joined by US-China correspondent Demetri Sevastopulo for a dive into military AI. We hear from Colonel Daniel “Animal” Javorsek, former deputy defence secretary Robert O Work, Elsa B Kania of the Center for a New American Security, and David Edelman, who works on AI and public policy at MIT.

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS 

RESPONSIBLE TECH SUMMIT - All Tech is Human, 15 September 2021

Are you focused on reducing the harms of technology, diversifying the tech pipeline, and ensuring that technology is aligned with the public interest? If so, please join us for the Responsible Tech Summit! This all-day gathering brings together a diverse range of participants that are committed to building a better tech future. The Responsible Tech Summit is being put on by the non-profit All Tech Is Human. All Tech Is Human is a Manhattan-based organization with a global audience filled with students, academics, startups, industry, policymakers, attorneys, sociologists, designers, artists, advocates, psychologists, and more!

DIGITAL DILEMMAS DIALOGUE #7: Biometrics, personal data and humanitarian protection, 22 September 2021, 10.00-10.30 CET

What are biometric data? What uses are there for this type of information? And what risks do we need to remain aware of? To open the seventh DigitHarium month, our Tokyo delegation has invited Cristiano Blanez, Manager for the International Organization Team at NEC, to discuss the work currently being done in the development of biometric technologies. During this discussion, we will go over the nature of biometric data, what distinguishes them from other types of sensitive data, what advantages they can bring to humanitarian operations, and what risks we need to be mindful of before determining whether we want to use them.

The discussion is part of the September thematic month – Biometrics.

PeaceCon@10's Request for Proposals is now open!

In partnership with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) is proud to host PeaceCon@10, COVID, Climate, and Conflict: Rising to the Challenges of a Disrupted World, taking place virtually, January 26-28, 2022. We invite peacebuilders from across the world to share their ideas for interactive sessions, workshops, or other creative online formats, with an emphasis on moving beyond long panel presentations and brief audience question-and-answers. Over the last 10 years, PeaceCon has become the largest global gathering of peacebuilders held in the United States, bringing together the diverse voices of experts, policymakers, and local peacebuilders alike. We can't wait to hear your ideas to help shape PeaceCon@10!

The deadline to submit applications is September 30, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

Online Library 

On our website, AI for Peace, you can find even more awesome content, podcasts, articles, white papers and book suggestions that can help you navigate through AI and peace fields. Check our online library!