LINKS WE LIKE #38 Algorithmic Justice: The Next Civil Rights Frontier? “The first duty of society is justice” – Wendell Phillips When you think of “civil rights”, many things probably come to mind. Generations-long struggles for racial or gender equality and equal protection for other disenfranchised communities are most commonly associated with the phrase. What you do not think of, … Read More
LWL #37 The Future of Health? How Big Data and AI are Reshaping Modern Medicine
LINKS WE LIKE #37 The Future of Health? How Big Data and AI are Reshaping Modern Medicine Health care is one sector for which the massive amount of data produced daily holds great promise. Data from electronic health records, medical devices and health-related apps (and other sources) has grown so large that they exceed human capabilities for analysis. This is … Read More
LWL #36 Crisis Data: New Technology and Humanitarian Emergencies
LINKS WE LIKE #36 Crisis Data: New Technology in Humanitarian Emergencies Accurate data is pivotal to identifying and responding to the needs of those impacted by a variety of shocks, including violent conflicts, environmental disasters, epidemics, and other life-threatening emergencies. By gathering and processing personal, public, and geographic data, aid organizations, humanitarian workers and other relevant actors are able to … Read More
LWL#35 The Future of Financial Inclusion: How New Technologies are Reshaping FinTech
LINKS WE LIKE #35 The Future of Financial Inclusion: How New Technologies are Reshaping FinTech Financial inclusion, or access to formal financial services, (such as bank accounts, credit, and loans) is one of the most valuable tools for breaking cycles of poverty. Unfortunately, an estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide remain “unbanked”, or lacking access to these services; half of which … Read More
LWL #34 The Creative Arts and AI: The Ultimate Collaboration (or Competition?)
LINKS WE LIKE #34 The Creative Arts and AI: The Ultimate Collaboration (or Competition?) Repetitive, structured, and monotonous are adjectives often associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Normally these tools are not linked with being creative, let alone with the creation of art. However, in recent years this perception has changed and, increasingly, artists are breaking barriers … Read More
LWL #33 Agriculture and AI: From the Root of Civilization to its Promising Future
We now find ourselves on the verge of the next “agricultural revolution”, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and agriculture coming together. In this edition of Links We Like, we explore the effects that this linkage will create.
LWL #32 Facebook, the Promise and the Peril
LINKS WE LIKE #32 Facebook, the Promise and the Peril When speaking about the purpose of his company, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been quoted as saying, “By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.” This leads to a very important question, is Facebook itself living up to this standard? According to a recent whistleblower, … Read More
LWL #31 Online Harassment and AI Content Moderation: Countering Threats to Freedom of Expression
LINKS WE LIKE #31 Online Harassment and AI Content Moderation: Countering Threats to Freedom of Expression The emergence and popularity of new social networks has opened space for a multitude of virtual interactions between people from diverse backgrounds. Consequently, the internet allows anyone to become a “communicator”, with access to a wide audience to share their views. With the virtual … Read More
LWL #30 AI and ML for People with Disabilities: Innovations and Challenges
LINKS WE LIKE #30 AI and ML for People with Disabilities: Innovations and Challenges One of the biggest opportunities that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies have opened up is the chance to design solutions that can positively impact the lives of people with disabilities. According to the World Health Organization, about 15% of the global population (1.2 Billion people) … Read More
LWL #29 Blockchain and its Application to Collective Challenges
LINKS WE LIKE #29 Blockchain and its Application to Collective Challenges Although it has most commonly been associated with cryptocurrency, since its release in 2008 with the white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, the blockchain system has been always praised for its potential to transform various sectors. Namely, blockchain can be used to address environmental challenges, enable e-voting, … Read More
LWL #28 Can Data and AI be Used as a Weapon to Fight Corruption?
LINKS WE LIKE #28 Can Data and AI be Used as a Weapon to Fight Corruption? Corruption is a major challenge for governments, companies, and societies all around the world. It is an expensive criminal and cultural practice. According to the UN, an estimated one trillion dollars are paid in bribes annually, while another 2.6 trillion are lost in corrupt activities … Read More
LWL #27 The Role of Big Data and AI in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)
LINKS WE LIKE #27 The Role of Big Data and AI in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) One of the biggest promises of the “data age” is the creation of tools that will allow us to keep track and evaluate the performance of different projects and policies more efficiently. The main appeal of using Big data and AI for monitoring and … Read More
LWL #26 Open Source Licenses and Accessibility for AI Models
LINKS WE LIKE #26 Open Source Licenses and Accessibility for AI Models The rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models has been accompanied by growing efforts to make these technologies accessible and available to non-experts through what is referred to as open-source licenses. As a result of this “democratization of AI” more models and training data are becoming public, a process … Read More
LWL #25 Discrimination in Data and Artificial Intelligence
LINKS WE LIKE #25 Discrimination in Data and Artificial Intelligence In commemoration of the international Zero Discrimination Day, and following the call to action from the president of the United Nations General Assembly Volkan Bozkir to “call out discrimination when we see it and advocate for a more just world”, this edition of LWL looks at issues of discrimination in … Read More
LWL #24: Fighting Misinformation with Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
LINKS WE LIKE #24 Fighting Misinformation with Big Data and Artificial Intelligence We are currently living in the age of information and data. Whether it be through news outlets or social media, everyday we are bombarded with hundreds of images and headlines that come in the shape of articles, personal stories, memes or videos. In this busy landscape, “fake news” … Read More
LWL #23: Harnessing Big Data for Mobility and Migration
LINKS WE LIKE #23 Harnessing Big Data for Mobility and Migration In 2019, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that the number of migrants worldwide had reached 272 million, a figure that has tripled since 1970. Though most of these migrants fled their countries searching for better job opportunities, about 26 million people have been driven away from their … Read More
LWL #22: Gender, Violence and Data
LINKS WE LIKE #22 Links We Like: Gender, Violence and Data In Latin America and the Caribbean, women have been commemorating the Elimination of Violence against Women Day ever since 1981, after the assassination of the three Dominican sisters Patricia, Minerva, Maria Teresa Mirabal. Yet, it only became officially recognized and adopted by all UN countries in 1999. Today, on … Read More
LWL #21: Elections, Democracy and Big Data
LINKS WE LIKE #21 Elections, Democracy and Big Data With the upcoming presidential election in the U.S., media outlets such as ABC News and The Economist, and even scholars like Alan L. Abramowitz, have searched for creative and insightful ways to use big data and data analysis as a way of better understanding the electorate and forecasting the results. In … Read More
LWL #20: Big Data for Climate Change Resilience
LINKS WE LIKE #20 Big Data for Climate Change Resilience Climate change and the looming threats to humankind it forecasts have headlined major news sources for a couple of weeks now. As the greatest menace to human kind, its effects are not only imminent, but ever more present with the recurrence of natural disasters, alarms of rising sea levels and … Read More
LWL #19: The Dispute Over 5G
LINKS WE LIKE #19 The Dispute Over 5G China and the United States are the biggest adversaries on the dispute over who will control one of the main technological advances in recent history: 5G, or fifth generation cellular network technology. 5G promises to connect everything. As Will Knight from the MIT Technology Review points out, these technologies “will replace cable … Read More
LWL #18: Algorithmic Bias and the Gender Gap
LINKS WE LIKE #18 Algorithmic Bias and the Gender Gap A recent article by Wang et al studies gender trends in computer science authorship, revealing that, “if current trends continue, parity between the number of male and female authors will not be reached in this century”. Although examining the proportion of female authorship over time only captures one of the … Read More
LWL #17: Green Tech: The Sustainability Conundrum
LINKS WE LIKE #17 Green Tech: The Sustainability Conundrum As a data-driven organization, we dwell in the techno-scientific world, leveraging research, capacity building and community engagement around topics such as machine learning and AI to drive a people-centered Big Data revolution. Although sustainable development is one of the main drivers of our work, we know how large the environmental footprint … Read More
LWL #16: AI For Social Good
LINKS WE LIKE #16 AI For Social Good Google’s “AI for Social Good” initiative launched on October 2018, aiming to drive the adoption of “Artificial Intelligence (AI) for public good”. Beyond the buzzword, how can we define this emerging field? In this week’s Links We Like we take a closer look at projects and research that use AI for sustainable … Read More
LWL #15: Algorithmic Justice, Risk Assessments, and Fairness
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on innovation, data literacy, open data, and more!
LWL #14: Gender (in)Equality Through Data and Technology
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on innovation, data literacy, open data, and more!
LWL #13: Algorithms, Accountability and Transparency
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on innovation, data literacy, open data, and more!
LWL #12
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on innovation, data literacy, open data, and more!
LWL #11
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on the World Humanitarian Summit, the data revolution, ethics, data governance, and more!
LWL #10
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on global development, privacy, open data, inequality, and more!
LWL#9
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on Blockchain, smart cities, EU data protection, privacy, censorship, and more!
LWL #8
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on smart cities, fragility, ebola, and more!
LWL #7
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on data ethics, ebola, privacy, inclusion, and more!
LWL #6
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on migration, cell phone data, climate refugees and more!
LWL #5
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on data visualizations, inclusion, Zika Virus, access, and more!
LWL #4
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly round-up of the links we like and want to share with you on Free Basics, Open Sourced data, Algorithms, Op Africa and more!
LWL #3
#Linkswelike Check out our weekly compilation of the links we like and want to share with you on Privacy Shield, migration, digital ethics, and more
LWL #2
LINKS WE LIKE #2 Here’s a quick weekly compilation of a few links we like and want to share with you: Could consumers sell access to their own encrypted data? It looks that way. “MIT’s New Blockchain Project Enigma Wants to Let You Share Your Data on Your Own Terms,” by Steven Melendez for FastCompany. Our Academic Director, Alex “Sandy” Pentland is … Read More
LWL #1
LINKS WE LIKE #1 Here’s a quick compilation of a few links we like and want to share with you: Compelling article by Charles Kenny of The Atlantic: “2015: The Best Year in History for the Average Human Being”. Violence dominated the headlines this year. But by many measures, humanity is in better shape than it’s ever been. Jeffrey Sachs writes … Read More