OCTOBER 2020

Spotlight on AI for peacebuilding and violence and conflict prevention, AI for humanitarian action, AI and surveillance, Facebook, and democracy, social media and hate crimes

For more resources on Democracy, Mis/Disinformation & AI look at our

Special Edition Newsletter

curated by Rachel Brooks, AI for Peace Research Fellow

THIS MONTH'S SPOTLIGHT 

Data for Peacebuilding and Prevention Ecosystem Mapping: The State of Play and the Path to Creating a Community of Practice, NYU CIC, October 27, 2020

In 2019 and 2020, the Center on International Cooperation at New York University convened researchers and practitioners for a series of workshops on Data for Peace and Security highlighting practical applications of these new approaches in the peacebuilding field. Now, NYU is continuing this work through a new initiative on Data for Peacebuilding and Prevention, which will include a series of monthly Data for Peace Dialogues. This report, launched at the first virtual dialogue, lays out the state of the field and provides recommendations on how best to grow the field effectively.

The report maps and analyzes the existing global ecosystem in the field of data for peace and prevention. It highlights multiple examples of relevant initiatives throughout the world utilizing big data, data visualization, AI, ML, image recognition, and social media listening. It also discusses technical challenges impacting all actors, such as the lack of data or lack of high-quality data, lack of access due to security reasons, and data colonialism, as well as the ethical considerations brought on by exponential technologies (security, accessibility, transparency, safety, trust, bias, and justice), and some specific challenges for data-driven approaches to peacebuilding.

Download the full report here.

BY AI FOR PEACE 

JOIN US AT BUILD PEACE 6-8 NOVEMBER!

COVID-19(84) – “Technology as a way out of pandemic or a way into surveillance capitalism”

This year Build Peace Conference is happening in the midst of the pandemic crisis, and AI for Peace is joining Build Peace to discuss this crisis especially with relation to new technologies. Pandemic revealed in so many ways vulnerabilities of our societies, social and economic inequalities, racism, discrimination, poverty, disinformation and hate speech, institutional weaknesses and general lack of trust in institutions. Technology somehow got at the very front of the pandemic debate, from how technology is going to save us or how it is creating dystopian future. There are some good things on the horizon, but there are also a number of concerning uses of tech, from contact tracing apps, patrol robots and drones, CCTV cameras , facial recognition, to big-data analytics for targeted tracing and social control. These things may be tools for protection, but they are also instruments of fear and control.

What we at AI for Peace did at the beginning of the pandemic is to give a community driven example how technology can be utilized and motivated by community needs. We started AI Policy pandemic challenge with an idea to help policymakers understand the social and economic impact of policies on world’s most vulnerable populations and make better evidence-based and data-driven decisions in this pandemic. We will shortly discuss this and other examples of utilizing data and tech for helping the most vulnerable populations and utilizing technology as a way out of the pandemic crisis, instead a way into surveillance capitalism. Join us at Build Peace Conference!

JOIN US AT GENEVA PEACE WEEK!

Digital Content: “Female Leadership, Techno-entrepreneurship, and Peace”

This video was created by Uppsala Rotary Peace Center, AI for PEACE, Moonshot CVE, Beyond Conflict.

This session aims to highlight how women take a leadership role through techno-entrepreneurship to leverage new technologies to harness the development of cutting edging technologies like Artificial Intelligence to counter violent extremism and build peace. Our featured female entrepreneurs will share their valuable insights including the success and difficulties they have faced as a female techno-start-up leader to challenge the industrial status-quo and redefine what constitutes conventions for technical innovation and conflict resolution. Featuring: Branka Panic, AI for PEACE; Karen Bernstein, Beyond Conflict Vidhya Ramalingam, Moonshot CVE; Moderator: Jia (Muyi) Yang, Uppsala Rotary Peace Center

JOIN US AT FUTURE SUMMIT – 18 NOVEMBER, 10am PST

A week-long space for conversations about innovation, future trends and technology's impact on society. A gathering of ideas, leaders and innovators for a better Future. A meeting of the wanderers, the action-oriented and the forward-thinkers.

Join us on 16-20 November for the 2020 journey into the Future: We look some at some the medium to long term impact of the pandemic but also at how AI, 5G and Cybersecurity are transforming industries and business models. What are the implications of the Climate Crisis and solutions for cleaner mobility and cities. How the Future of Work and Education looks like. What are the future business models in fintech, real-estate and retail? How do we live longer and what do we do with our extra time? How does the world change after the US elections and how does technology transforms the truth.

AI for Peace is will join with the session of “Is AI coming in Peace”, on November 18. Hope to see you there!

MASTERS DECODED PODCAST - Branka Panic: Influencing Peace by leveraging Artificial Intelligence, 11 October, 2020

In today's podcast, I have invited Branka Panic. From a humble beginning, to set up the think tank working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, peace, human security, democracy, human rights, and humanitarian action. Branka is a political scientist, expert in international security, international development policy, and peacebuilding. With years of experience working on issues of Fragility, Conflict, and Violence, at the humanitarian-peace-development nexus. She is the founder of the Center for Exponential Technologies and Founding Member of Sustainable Healthy Habitats and Healthy Humans for Peace.

AI FOR PEACE at the “AI and Crime Prevention in Africa”, October 1, 2020

In collaboration with Technology Against Crime (TAC) Africa, and key stakeholders (CyberPeace Foundation and AI Media Group) UNICRI conducted a virtual workshop on “AI and Crime Prevention in Africa”.

With the participation of around 95 attendees from 21 countries, we explored the possible role of AI in crime prevention in Africa and the state of AI-readiness of law enforcement communities in Africa. Extra attention was paid on how to ensure the use of AI in a manner that does not erode human rights, deepen inequality or exacerbate discrimination. This meeting will also serve to engage representatives from the region in the Third INTERPOL-UNICRI Global Meeting on AI for Law Enforcement to be held on 23-27 November 2020.

AI FOR PEACE WELCOMES NEW RESEARCH FELOW

We are thrilled to introduce our new Research Fellow Maanya Vaidyanathan, policy and legal researcher from India. Maanya has a Masters in Law degree in International Law and International Security from The University of Glasgow. She works as a Tech Policy Consultant in New Delhi. She is an enthusiastic academic with a special interest in human rights, democracy and AI. While at #AIforPeace Maanya will concentrate on freedom of speech and its challenges on social media and the impacts of AI on democracy. More from Maanya coming soon, stay tuned!

THIS MONTH’S BEST READS 

AI in the humanitarian sector, NET Hope, October 6, 2020

Our world is facing ever more intense and protracted humanitarian crises, and as a result the global community is pressed to find new ways to help people and communities in need. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the tools that has potential to help us tackle some of the toughest humanitarian challenges. AI systems – with their capacity to learn, to predict, and in some instances, to make decisions based on those predictions and take specific actions – are fundamentally changing the world around us and improving how we live and work. So, it’s no surprise that AI has become a hot topic in the humanitarian sector, with many discussions about its benefits, risks, and appropriate use cases as humanitarian organizations look to incorporate AI in humanitarian programming.

Will We Have Cyberwar or Cyber Peace? Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2020

While humans usually reject predictions of futures dramatically changed from the present, information technology has produced a never-ending stream of upheavals in the economy, warfare, our very way of life. Thus, cyberspace in 2030 could be a very different place than it is today, for good or ill. How we deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning to attack and to defend networks will make the difference.

Modern democracy: Data, surveillance creep and more authoritarian regimes? October 10, 2020

The pandemic forced governments worldwide to implement lockdowns, restrict freedom and enhance surveillance at a rapid rate. However, surveillance creep is not a new phenomenon of a pandemic world but something that has been prominent for a while now. The 2016 US election and Brexit, followed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, were pivotal moments that showcased the erosion of privacy, as well as the evident control through AI that large tech corporations have in our everyday lives. This can be argued to have fundamentally changed democracy as we once knew it. Today, in a world battling with coronavirus and powerful technology corporations, will authoritarian surveillance states be our new reality?

Study suggests connection between social media, hate crime, October 6, 2020

Unlike traditional media, social media platforms allow users to easily select niche topics and extreme viewpoints. This can limit the range of information people absorb and create online communities that reinforce similar ideas and views. Researchers measured anti-refugee sentiment on social media based on Facebook page of the Alternative fur Deutschland, a relatively new right-wing party that positions itself as anti-refugees and anti-immigration. Researchers have established that spikes in refugee social media posts are closely linked to hate crimes against refugees, especially in municipalities where people were more at risk. Alternative Deutschland fur page. This correlation was particularly strong for violent incidents such as assault.

A Partial Ban on Autonomous Weapons Would Make Everyone Safer, FP, October 24, 2020

The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Group of Governmental Experts met late last month to discuss lethal, autonomous weapons. The semiannual meetings are the first serious effort by global governments to control autonomous weapons. And the weapons pose serious risks to global security: Even the best artificial intelligence isn’t well suited to distinguishing farmers from soldiers and may be trained only on laboratory data that is a poor substitute for real battlefields.

AI Engineers Need to Think Beyond Engineering, HBR, October 28, 2020

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, impacting industries and creating entirely new opportunities. From an engineering standpoint, AI is just a more advanced form of data engineering. Most good AI projects function more like muddy pickup trucks than spotless race cars — they are a workhorse technology that humbly makes a production line 5% safer or movie recommendations a little more on point. However, more so than many other technologies, it is very, very easy for a well-intentioned AI practitioner to inadvertently do harm when they set out to do good. AI has the power to amplify unfair biases, making innate biases exponentially more harmful.

Behind Cambridge Analytica lay a bigger threat to our democracy: Facebook, The Guardian, October 15, 2020

The information commissioner (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, has concluded its long-running investigation into Cambridge Analytica. As had been expected by many, this found no smoking gun. Despite concerns about its data practices, the short-lived political consultancy ended up functioning as a distraction. But there are still real reasons to be concerned about the impact of tech companies – notably Facebook – on our democracy. We need to confront their surveillance business models, their increasingly central position in digital society, and the power they now hold as a result.

Data for better lives - An agenda for meaningful connectivity in Africa, BKC, October 27, 2020

The World Bank’s annual World Development Report 2021 themed “Data for better lives’’ will be launched in Q1 2021. In our modern world where the impact of data and digital technology has never been more keenly felt, the focus of the World Bank — a major international developmental partner — on improving lives through data and technology could not have been more timely.

This is particularly true for Africa, the least digitally connected continent. Africa lags behind the rest of the world in Internet access, digital device access, and digital skills. The World Bank’s focus on data and technology in 2021 should rally governments, industry, academia, and civil society to push for the actualization of developmental targets focused on digital penetration and adoption.

THIS MONTH’S PODCAST EPISODE CHOICE

Deep Tech Podcast: How online misinformation murdered the truth, October 28, 2020

Major platforms like Facebook and Twitter have started to take aggressive action against disinformation networks and accounts associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. But acting to block disinformation in an attempt to stop the spread can backfire and has recently left social media platforms open to accusations of censorship. This podcast examines a proposal from Joan Donovan, the director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School. She argues that it might be time to start regulating social media like another addictive and potentially harmful product: tobacco.

How Taiwan is Using Technology to Foster Democracy (with Digital Minister Audrey Tang), HBR, October 14, 2020

“Democracy is a technology. Like any […] technology, it gets better when more people strive to improve it,” says Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first digital minister. Minister Tang joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how the Taiwanese Government is using the Internet as a space for civic participation, dialogue, and consensus building. They also discuss: How the open Internet helped Taiwan proactively tackle the Covid-19 outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic. Algorithmic co-governance, and how it can keep social media platforms in check. How the values of radical transparency and digital openness shape new forms of decision-making.

How democracies can reclaim digital power, MIT, October 15, 2020

Technology companies provide much of the critical infrastructure of the modern state and develop products that affect fundamental rights. Search and social media companies, for example, have set de facto norms on privacy, while facial recognition and predictive policing software used by law enforcement agencies can contain racial bias.

THE FULL FACT - Deep Fakes, October 4 and Global Misinformation, October 14

Deep Fakes - What happens when you can no longer believe what you’re seeing? Deep Fakes have often been touted as an emerging tool of disinformation, but how big is the problem now, and how big will it get? World-leading photo forensics expert Dr Hany Farid joins us from California to explain how the technology is improving, and whether the detection technology can keep up with its progress. Could you personally spot a ‘deep fake’ - and will you be able to in ten years’ time?

Global Misinformation - Is false information ‘everywhere?’ How does misinformation manifest itself in other nations? We talk to fact checkers from across the globe to explore the similarities in misinformation, and what makes the UK unique. We look at patterns in Europe before moving over to Africa and the Americas to discover the different landscapes of information in our respective continents.

THIS MONTH’S PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

MEDIATING MACHINES – Opportunities and Challenges of AI in Peacemaking

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers opportunities to develop tools that could support mediators and their teams in gathering and analyzing the data produced in the context of peace processes. Although the topic of AI has come to receive increased attention in the field of peace mediation, there is a lack of concrete examples and applications that could bring discussions forward. This project will therefore explore the ways in which AI-applications could be used in peacemaking, while raising important questions about potential challenges these applications might pose.

In particular, the research will analyze how AI can support the analysis of arguments and opinions voiced by conflict parties and stakeholders in digital data. To this end, the project builds on recent advances in text-mining of online participation processes.

THIS MONTH’S WEBINARS

Data for Peace Dialogues: Data for Peacebuilding and Prevention, Ecosystem Mapping Report, NYU CIC, October 27, 2020

How can cutting-edge approaches to data—like advanced data science methods, quantitative methods, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP)—help inform peacebuilding and conflict prevention? The Data for Peacebuilding and Prevention project at the Center on International Cooperation at NYU answered some of these questions and presented a report as part of the virtual event series “Data for Peace Dialogues” recorded here.

HAI Weekly Seminar with Elizabeth Adams - Civic Tech: The Path to Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology in Minneapolis

Beyond the buildings, lakes, homes, and businesses in Minneapolis, are people. People who are impacted by technology used by government. Civic Tech enhances the relationship between people, their community and government by giving a voice in public decision-making processes. Without public oversight of A.I. enabled technologies, communities face over policing, loss of data privacy protections and the consequences of human bias directing technology use to govern society. Diverse perspectives should be included in Civic Tech solutions to ensure proper representation and consideration for communities of color and vulnerable populations, those most negatively impacted. This conversation will include the process and path taken throughout Elizabet’s Race & Tech Fellowship toward the adoption of public oversight of surveillance tech ordinances with the city of Minneapolis.

THIS MONTH’S PUBLICATIONS

Data for Peacebuilding and Prevention Ecosystem Mapping: The State of Play and the Path to Creating a Community of Practice, NYU CIC, October 27, 2020

The report maps and analyzes the existing global ecosystem in the field of data for peace and prevention. It highlights multiple examples of relevant initiatives throughout the world utilizing big data, data visualization, AI, ML, image recognition, and social media listening. It also discusses technical challenges impacting all actors, such as the lack of data or lack of high-quality data, lack of access due to security reasons, and data colonialism, as well as the ethical considerations brought on by exponential technologies (security, accessibility, transparency, safety, trust, bias, and justice), and some specific challenges for data-driven approaches to peacebuilding.

Download the full report here.

EVENTS TO FOLLOW 

GENEVA PEACE WEEK - "Rebuilding trust after disruption: Pathways to reset international cooperation", 2-6 November 2020

Geneva Peace Week (GPW) is a leading annual forum in the international peacebuilding calendar, and the flagship event of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. This year, the thematic focus of the week is "Rebuilding trust after disruption: Pathways to reset international cooperation".

Geneva Peace Week 2020 (GPW20) aims to galvanise leadership, build trust and contribute to transforming international cooperation in the wake of COVID-19. Geneva Peace Week 2020 will be held totally online from 2-6 November 2020. Institutions and individuals in Geneva and around the world have come together to organise an interactive GPW20 experience. Attendees are welcome to participate in GPW ‘Live Sessions’ and to also engage with the new GPW ‘Digital Series’. The forum is free and open to the public, and details on how to participate can be found here.

BUILD PEACE – Social Justice and Pandemic in the Digital Age, 6-8 November 2020

Digital technologies are already having an effect on how identities are lived, on the shape of the urban realm, and on the use of surveillance to express and sustain socio-economic inequality. The pandemic is now amplifying these inequities. The externalities associated with the pandemic (such as misinformation) and the associated response (such as increased surveillance) are likely to be long lasting. The pandemic happening in a digital age is raising a set of particular social justice issues.

The Build Peace 2020 conference will focus on social justice and the coronavirus pandemic in the digital age as this plays out across three relevant sub-themes: identity polarization, urban space, and surveillance capitalism. We will explore the effects of digital technologies on social landscapes that have been affected by the pandemic and a variety of social justice issues. We will also share initiatives that use digital technologies, creative solutions and social innovations to address these same social justice dynamics.

DATA NATIVES – Europe’s Biggest Data Science Conference, 18-20 November

Data Natives Unlimited is a series of hybrid (online and offline) events that aims to bring data and tech professionals, established companies, public institutions and governments together to share knowledge, co-create solutions, establish relationships and celebrate the achievements of data scientists, founders, entrepreneurs and activists. Experts predict that AI will “increasingly mediate our social, cultural, economic, and political interactions”, and, ultimately, change our society. But what kind of change would it be? This and many other questions will be tackled at our Open Forum events.

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!