Lmst

Digital sovereignty is a big thing in Brussels - also in #AI. But what are the politics behind the "EU AI sovereignty" ambition?

After all, it could mean boosting EU AI at the expense of foreign competitors. But also - a completely different angle - to rein in tech influence in society tout court, so that citizens regain some sovereignty themselves. Which is it?

For the Journal of European Public Policy, I've dissected 6 yrs of Commission strategy to find out.

Now OA: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2024.2318475

Daniel Mügge boosted:

The CJEU's PNR ruling develops guardrails for AI governance, especially in the AI Act, & sets up a dilemma: between a human rights-aligned EU AI regime & international regulatory cooperation.

@dmugge on extraterritorial implications.

https://verfassungsblog.de/pnr-fundamental-rights/

Struggles over what privacy actually means hit a tech-saturated US campus.

Excellent story on the Mites project at Carnegie Mellon from the MIT Tech Review. Brings together abstract but fundamental debates about our future with a real-people, here-and-now narrative. Really insightful...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/03/1070665/cmu-university-privacy-battle-smart-building-sensors-mites/

Trade data is a staple of economic analysis. But, as this paper w/Lukas Linsi and Brian Burgoon shows, there is a lot more noise in the data than meets the eye, and than over-confident econometric analyses let on.

W/a new trade data set that reflects this noise (available here: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/RBRHFE), we ran replications of prominent studies in the field - with some surprising results.

OA now in ISQ: https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/67/2/sqad020/7085502

Thanks to everyone who helped make this better over the years!

The Problem with Trade Measurement in International Relations

Lukas Linsi, University of Groningen
Brian BURGOON and Daniel MÜGGE, University of Amsterdam

Trade statistics are widely used in studies and policymaking focused on economic interdependence. Yet, researchers in Inter- national Relations (IR) have largely disregarded half the data available to study trade. Bilateral trade flows are usually recorded twice: by the sending economy as an export and by the receiving one as an import. These two values should match, but dis- crepancies between them tend to be large and pervasive. Most studies ignore this issue, which we label the “mirror problem” for short, by using only one entry. However, it is not self-evident which one is consistently most accurate. Hence, IR’s reliance on error-prone trade statistics may be distorting its study of economic interdependence. This article explores this problem in three steps: first, we quantify the mirror problem in trade data. Second, we investigate the origins of the mirror problem, using statistical analyses, archival records, and interviews with statistical experts. Third, we illustrate the implications of the mirror problem through replications covering diverse topics in IR. We find that accounting for the mirror problem can vari- ably strengthen, undermine, or overturn conclusions of such analyses. The findings underscore the severity of measurement problems in IR and suggest particular ways to address those problems.

Who is lobbying whom about the impending EU AI rule book?

Hard to know from the outside, of course. But this report from the Corporate Europe Observatory shines at least some light on these efforts. The intensity of lobbying is as good a reminder as any about just how much is at stake here for big tech - and for the rest of society.

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2023/02/lobbying-ghost-machine

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Reminder: CfP (P)PE "#Crisis and #Transformation" conference at Uni #Witten/Herdecke on various contemporary crises and transformation processes, #polecon, #IPE. Deadline 10 February, more infos here: https://www.uni-wh.de/index.php?id=1473 @AnnPettifor @thomasrixen @SimoneClaar @surfmoe @stefwalter__ @stefaneich @kaikodden @istuetzle @C_West @JohnhoganMorris @proufos @KAPistor @MathiasKrams @HSchwenken @dmugge @VerglPolwi @CaglarGuelay2 @st_schmalz @jvtk @Sonja_Buckel

Security and military logics encroach on EU digital tech regulation.

In the Journal of European Public Policy, I argue that point in general, and specifically for the EU's budding regulation of AI.

For better or worse, it makes little sense anymore to detach AI regulation debates from those about (in)security, and vice versa.

Available open access here:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2023.2171090

The securitization of the EU’s digital tech regulation

Daniel Mügge

Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

ABSTRACT Regulation is a prominent tool in what Kruck and Weiss call the Regulatory Security State. Safeguarding security entails shaping tech companies’ behaviour through arms-length rules, rather than wielding state capacity directly — a power shift away from state actors. As | argue, this dynamic also works in reverse: securitization of digital technology imposes security provision - a traditional state rationale — on regulatory domains hitherto dominated by commercial motivations. There is not only more regulation in security; there also is more security in regulation. This dynamic challenges the EU’s global regulatory entanglements. | use budding EU regulation of artificial intelligence (Al) to illustrate this struggle: do Al's military implications weigh so heavily that its regulation should largely be seen through that lens? And should a transatlantic security alliance trump EU ambitions to craft its own Al governance approach? This fight is undecided yet. But given Al's general-purpose character, its outcome will reverberate throughout society at large.

Job alert ✨

Assistant professor "AI and European Democracies" at the University of Amsterdam

- (Very short) tenure track
- DL 5 Feb 2023
- Embedded in the Humanities Faculty

https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/Assistant-Professor-%28UD%29-in-AI-and-European-democracies/761323802/

"The smarter we make the A.I., the less it wants to do our jobs."

The alignment problem summarized in the New Yorker of 31 Oct.

Two humans watching a robot relaxing at a desk.

@jensclasen I just found myself trying to say "Na ja" with each of those meanings in front of my computer, with just slightly different inflections... Good that my office mate has already called it a day 🙃

@annehellmuthhaeuser @politicalscience Thanks, Anne. Worth mentioning: the pdf of "Artificial Intelligence with Chinese Characteristics" is downloadable for free through the link you shared!

Sofia Scasserra and Adriana Foronda dissect how secrecy jurisdictions for tax evasion (Virgin Islands, etc.) can figure in corporate schemes to put data as a profit source beyond regulators' reach.

Similarities between tax havens and potential data havens go far:

- Leverage sovereignty to ensure minimum transparency
- Facilitate complex corporate structures to avoid regulation
- Strong infrastructure
- Limited ancillary regulation (e.g. climate impact of data centres)

https://www.tni.org/en/publication/banking-on-data

Snapshot of report cover: "Banking on Data. How the world's tax havens become the data centres for the digital economy". By Sofia Scasserra and Adriana Foronda

Daniel Mügge boosted:

I’m not saying I chose to live here for the moss and lichen, but I’m not saying I didn’t.

#mosstodon #lichensubscribe #FungiFriday

A small but dense out cropping of moss that is flowering and entwined with pixie cup lichen. air site stop a hunk of lichen covered rock on a bigger lichen covered rock. It is like a world unto itself, brave and strong.

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Come work with us!!

We are thrilled to announce the opening of 17 (!) #phd and #postdoc positions in our national research program Public Values in the Algorithmic Society algosoc @algosoc

DL: January 16, 2023

https://www.algosocvacancies.org

Daniel Mügge boosted:

Howdy. I'm POLITICO's chief tech correspondent — figuring this platform out just like everyone else.

I write a weekly newsletter, called Digital Bridge, connecting the dots on global tech policy, politics and policymakers. If that's your jam, sign up here: https://politi.co/38tlmQp.

Getting ready for teaching about global ramifications of proliferating #AI, and once again amazed by the Anatomy of an AI System-map by @Katecrawford and Vladan Joler. So much there, almost wall paper material...

Also remarkable how the whole regulatory infrastructure and the political context (public sponsorship, military use of AI, etc.) are not yet reflected here. Looks like there's another map, about the Political Entanglements of an AI System, still to be made ;)

https://anatomyof.ai/

Daniel Mügge boosted:

I bet you’ve heard of Galileo & Hubble, but what about Henrietta Swan Leavitt?

Leavitt changed astronomy. She figured out new ways to measure a star’s distance from Earth & her work helped determine the universe is expanding.

Her boss, Edward Pickering, published her findings UNDER HIS NAME. Later, Shapley used her findings to determine distances around the Milky Way w/o credit.

Leavitt’s work is still used today. Next time you hear about famous men in #science share her story. #HistoryRemix

Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Image: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Last week, the EU reached political agreement on Digital Rights and Principles; final signatures expected in the coming weeks.

Often, skepticism in the face of lofty principles is justified. But in spite of the proposals limitations, I sense here a genuine ambition to make digital tech work for societies. If nothing else, European leaders signing up to that creates a standard to which we can hold them.

#GlassHalfFull this morning...

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-principles#tab_1

Overview of proposed EU Digital Rights principles: people at the centre, solidarity and inclusion, freedom of choice, participation, safety and security, and sustainability.

Daniel Mügge boosted:

They say “We can’t do that. We’re not #Amsterdam.” You respond “Amsterdam wasn’t always like that either,” showing before & after transformations illustrating that the cities we admire made CHOICES. And they’re still making choices TODAY. They make more tired excuses. You don’t accept them either. (1e van der Helststraat, 1978 & 2005) #Dutch #Cityplanning #urbanplanning #streets #urbandesign #cities #streetsforpeople

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