THIS MONTH’S BEST READS
If AI is so good, why hasn’t it changed the way we deliver humanitarian aid? The Good AI, 3 December 2020
Artificial intelligence advocates and experts make bold promises about the ability of AI to do more with less and create efficiencies, allocating tasks like data analysis, inventory, and record keeping to machines, freeing up time for humans to tackle bigger challenges. But can AI revolutionise the way in which humanitarian aid is delivered? And if it can, why hasn’t it done so already?
Sci-fi surveillance: Europe's secretive push into biometric technology, 10 December 2020
EU science funding is being spent on developing new tools for policing and security. But who decides how far we need to submit to artificial intelligence? Billions of euros in public funding flow annually to researching controversial security technologies, and at least €1.3bn more will be released over the next seven years.
Companies collaborating with global experts to help eradicate human trafficking using technology, December 2020
Human trafficking is a complex, thriving crime that impacts every country: There are an estimated 40 million people worldwide subjected to some form of modern slavery. Given the widespread nature of this crime and the complexity of tackling it, increased engagement from all stakeholders, including and especially the private sector, is vital. Through their expertise, capacity for innovation, and global reach, technology companies can play a major role in preventing and disrupting human trafficking and in empowering survivors. Digital information and communication technologies offer opportunities for a step change in tackling this crime.
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube must end the attack on critical voices in MENA, 17 December 2020
Access Now and 42 human rights organizations, journalists and activists from across the globe are voicing frustration and dismay at how platform policies and content moderation procedures often lead to the silencing and erasure of critical voices from marginalized and oppressed communities across the Middle East and North Africa. The coalition urges Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to not be complicit in censorship and erasure of oppressed communities’ narratives and histories, and ask they implement the requested measures. Read more here.
Alibaba facial recognition tech can identify Uighurs: Report, 17 December 2020
Technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has facial recognition technology that can specifically pick out members of China’s Uighur minority, surveillance industry researcher IPVM said in a report. The report comes as human rights groups accuse China of forcing more than one million Muslim Uighurs into labour camps, and calls out firms suspected of complicity.
Facial Recognition Technology and the Death of an Iranian Nuclear Scientist: An International Humanitarian Law Perspective, 21 December 2020
On 27 November 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed while traveling in his car just east of Tehran. It is understood that Fakhrizadeh was Iran’s foremost nuclear scientist and that he led the country’s efforts to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran claimed that facial recognition technology was used to facilitate the killing via an unmanned, vehicle-mounted, machine gun ‘equipped with an intelligent satellite system’ which zoomed in on Fakhrizadeh and shot him.
Microsoft’s iron cage: Prison surveillance and e-carceration, 21 December 2020
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of “Crime and Punishment”, once wrote, “The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.” Updated for the 21st century, our “degree of civilisation” might be revealed by the technology used inside them. For Microsoft, prisons represent a market. In recent years, the company and its business partners have started providing an array of surveillance and Big Data analytics solutions to prisons, courts and community supervision programmes.
Activists and Parliamentarians Join Together to Prevent Armed Drones in Germany, 24 December 2020
In an historic development that will undoubtedly save the lives and sanity of many people in Mali and Afghanistan—a development in which a number of U.S. citizens participated—the German military establishment was forced by a surprising surge of opposition among the MPs in the Socialist Democrat Party (SPD) in the German Bundestag (parliament) to delay plans, at least for now, to arm the Heron TP drones that Germany has been leasing from Israel since 2018. Instead, further discussions of the ethical and legal ramifications of deploying armed drones are to take place in Germany.
The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence, 24 December 2020
As artificial intelligence technologies become more powerful and deeply integrated in human systems, countries around the world are struggling to understand the benefits and risks they might pose to national security, prosperity and political stability. That AI is deeply embedded in the discourse of geopolitical competition is well established. The belief that AI will be the key to military, economic and ideological dominance has found voice in a proliferation of grand AI mission statements by the US, China, Russia and other players.
EU Fundamental Rights Agency Issues Report On AI Ethical Considerations, 25 December 2020
The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) has recently published a report on AI that probes into the ethical considerations that must be undertaken to develop the technology. A document published under the title ‘Getting The Future Right’, interviewed over a hundred public administration officials and private company staff, in an effort to answer the question.
What if autonomous weapons are more ethical than humans? 29 December 2020
The emergence of machines capable of aiding warfare through artificial intelligence was sobering and worrisome before the more recent evolution of “lethal autonomous weapons,” or LAWs. These weapons are defined by their ability to “think through” decisions on the battlefield, or whatever arena of combat they are in, and make the “decision” about whether or not to use lethal force against a human or group of humans. Once designers started building prototypes of such machines, which could target and kill combatants without explicit authorization on a case-by-case basis, humanity entered a new paradigm of warfare.
ICYMI
How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Curb Deforestation in the Amazon? IPI Global Observatory, November 23, 2020
The estimated loss in revenue from illegal logging alone costs timber producing countries between $10 to 15 billion per year. Stolen wood is estimated to depress world timber prices by up to 16 percent each year. In spite of these impacts, effective strategies to curb illegal deforestation are hard to find. Part of the problem is a lack of adequate forest monitoring, which is complicated by the challenges to obtaining accurate and consistent spatial data on deforestation. Even when greater accuracy and reliability are achieved—for instance, with the support of satellite technologies that allow for real-time tracking and increasingly detailed surveillance of forest canopies—filtering large amounts of data can be slow, labor intensive, and expensive. The enormous troves of data that can now be gathered through the deployment of drones pose similar challenges.