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Few things stir emotions and financial markets quite like artificial intelligence, yet too few people understand how it’s made, how it’s measured, how it intersects with the law, and what its societal implications may be. The most well-known issues, such as misinformation, hallucinations, “nudify” apps, and the like, are the tip of the iceberg. I […]
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The soul of modern complexity science lies in understanding, training, and controlling the interactions among millions of elementary degrees of freedom to generate emergent dynamics; in other words, to shape the effective physical laws that govern the behavior we observe. This goal has so far been achieved primarily in computer simulations and in models that […]
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Artificial intelligence and machine learning have enabled widespread automation of government decision-making in Western liberal democracies. Yet vulnerable populations have been seriously harmed because of the difficulties they face in challenging automated decisions. In Australia, the social security automated system pejoratively dubbed as “Robodebt” erroneously identified overpayments deemed to be owed by social security beneficiaries. […]
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In a world largely shaped by Silicon Valley tech giants, the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, now expanding to new members —are emerging as influential players in the realm of digital policy and innovation. With 40% of the world’s population and a quarter of global GDP, the BRICS nations command substantial resources, […]
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The Information Economy At Facebook’s initial public offering in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg shared a motto: “Move fast and break things.” Later abandoned by Facebook, the catchphrase prevails as a call for disruptive innovation. It’s invoked by tech executives who insist they must “break eggs to make an omelet,” and also in policy circles to condemn […]
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Arthur C. Clarke famously stated that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Most of us have experienced this law with respect to the latest iterations of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4. This perspective may lead to incorrect usage of LLMs, resulting in undesirable and dangerous effects such as privacy violations, proliferation […]
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“I know a person when I talk to it.” With these words Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines in June 2022, thinking that a Google chatbot had become sentient. Google did not appreciate these headlines, and Lemoine was fired. But what is remarkable about this incident is that, as of 2022, someone in the industry […]
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A central function of the state is to provide insurance against the vagaries of life and markets, such as accidents, ill health, old age, or unemployment. Collectively, these mandatory risk pooling arrangements are known as social insurance, or the welfare state. According to influential accounts in the literature, the welfare state exists because (social) insurance […]
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