BLOG: If we want to design ethical AI that benefits a human evolution, we need a way of talking about it that respects our human values and quirks.
Category: BLOG
Mediamocracy scribbles on the intersection between tech, law, culture and society.
A call for an AI Ethics and Social Impact Analysis
We ask artificially intelligent systems to make order in our messy modern realities, but very rarely do we question what type of order. This is a call for an historical awareness of the social systems that we are building: Which social, cultural norms, values and interests do they represent, reinforce and enact?
CPDP 2017: Ethics in the Age of Intelligent Machines
– by Gry Hasselbalch (based on panel debate participation, Ethics, Observational Platforms, Mathematics and Fundamental Rights, CPDP, Brussels, 2017) A few years ago a social media company decided to do some experiments on its users. Filling their news feeds with positive or negative stories, they were measuring hundreds of thousands of people’s emotional reactions. When…
Is True Online Privacy Only for the Rich?
by Gry Hasselbalch and Pernille Tranberg First appeared in DailyDot 23rd October BLOG: How come Facebook knows that I have a mother with Alzheimer’s, a woman asked the other day. She was sure that she hadn’t provided the social medium with such sensitive information. But when quizzed a bit further, she confirmed that she had…
Modern Alchemy: Solving the AI Mystery
“Algorithms you get me like no other”. A person is leaning into a hole in an otherwise empty plain wall. Outside is a big sky with billions of distant stars. “30 songs you didn’t know you loved yet”, continues the Spotify ad. A spot for your eyes to dwell and escape as you rumble through…
Who decides what privacy is?
Blog (updated 15 June 2016): There’s a battle of words going on, the battle is about the definition of “privacy”, and it’s been going on for centuries. Somehow we’ve led ourselves to believe that the definition of privacy that we all think we share is something intrinsically connected to the individual. But actually it’s not….
– by Gry Hasselbalch In 2015 one of the most promising virtual reality products Oculus Rift reached the headlines of the world tech press. Oculus Rift has been described as expensive, but worth every penny. For the few that were able to test the device before its release, they primarily described is as an amazing experience, – a…
An Ethics for the Digital Age
– by Gry Hasselbalch This January the European Data Protection Supervisor presented his new “Ethics Advisory Group”. A group of experts that will help him “reconsider the ethical dimension of the relationships between human rights, technology, markets and business models and their implications for the rights to privacy and data protection in the digital environment.”…
Opacity in machine learning algorithms
– by Gry Hasselbalch In her new article “How the machine ‘thinks’: Understanding opacity in machine learning algorithms” (January 2016) Jenna Burrell from UC Berkley School of Information discusses methods to investigate opacity in algorithms. Once a technical, opaque word belonging to the sphere of computer scientists and programmers, “Algorithm” has today become a commonly…
About the new EU age limit
BLOG: The long-awaited EU data protection reform agreed on by the Europan Union late Tuesday night stipulated among others that companies cannot process the data of children and young people under the age of 16 without their parents’ consent.
Standing in the Rip Current of the Algorithmic Economy with Closed Eyes
– by Gry Hasselbalch How can we question the ethics of a service if we don’t have access to the details of how it is designed to act on data? How can we put a health warning on a product if we don’t know the ingredients?
A toy that wants to “phone home”
– by Gry Hasselbalch Toy manufacturers are today creating intelligent toys that remember, find patterns and respond to data from children. We need a data ethical approach to innovation in the development of an “Internet of Things” for children.
Machines in school: One more version of “free”
– by Gry Hasselbalch “If it’s free then you are the product”. This statement normally applies to consumers paying for online services with their data. Another version of this is developers using big industry machine learning technologies for free to build and create services they don’t own the real value of.
Society of the Destiny Machine and the Algorithmic God (s)
– by Gry Hasselbalch, May 14 2015 Our destiny is a product. Fate is developed upon and innovated with. Fate is part of an actual machinery. It can be sold and traded with. Fate is something the Destiny Machine produces.
Den anden digitale kløft: Køb og sælg dit privatliv på nettet
(Read an English shorter version of this article here: THE SECOND DIGITAL DIVIDE: PAY FOR PRIVACY AND TRADE WITH PRIVACY) BLOG: I fremtiden kan du købe forskellige grader af privatliv på nettet. Hvis du har råd til det.
The Second Digital Divide: Pay for Privacy and Trade with your Privacy
– by Gry Hasselbalch If you weren’t already aware of it, you are being profiled online and your personal data traded in a billion dollar data industry. Don’t worry, most people don’t know much about this. The personal data market is incomprehensible to the average consumer mostly because the trades with their data happen without…
Maciej Cegłowski’s talk on the evolution of the surveillance pr default business model
BLOG: If you still didn’t read Maciej Cegłowski’s talk from May 2014 on the evolution of the surveillance pr default business model of the internet, please do so now. It cuts straight through the narratives of industry, government and other interest groups in the surveillance- privacy – internet debates of today and exposes them for…
Recap of Computers, Privacy & Data Protection Protection Conference, Brussels 2015
BLOG: “It’s like preaching to the converted” one participant tells me when I arrive one day into the CPDP 2015 conference. And so it is. The meta narrative of the conference is so univocally clear and concurred that the Twitter feed #CPDP2015 is almost at a stand still. Expect from occasional ill received peeps from US representatives…
Next: “The Selfie Drone” – which laws apply?
– by Gry Hasselbalch The drones are arriving. Not only as military devices. But as a new business model, a different way of conducting journalism and a new research tool. The tiny device will fly high above and with images add a new perspective that reveals a world of detail that would not have been…
Be unpredictable
AWARENESS RAISING: One of the greatest challenges today is the societal habitualization to the digital surveillance society. If surveillance and prediction is the norm, accepted as the natural state of affairs, people stops questioning it.
Language, power and privacy
Talk at the Indie Tech Summit, Brighton, July 2014 This is the direct transcript of my talk (thank you to the Indie Tech team for doing all the work!) DONT WANT TO READ? SEE THE TALK HERE
Tillid
“Tillid” har været år 2013’s buzz-word. Alle taler om ”tilliden til internettet”, som noget, der skal genskabes og genopbygges. Og den ”mistillid”, der er fulgt efter sidste års afsløringer om masseovervågning, præsenteres som et kerneproblem. Men måske vi skulle vente lidt med at genskabe tilliden til internettet. This post is in Danish, because it was written…
The internet is broken – but we are still asked to “trust” it?
– by Gry Hasselbalch “Trust ” was the word of the year. Everyone talks about “trust in the Internet ” as something that needs to be restored and rebuilt. And the mistrust in the internet that followed last year’s revelations about mass surveillance is presented as a core problem. But perhaps we shouldn’t aim to reestablish…
Privacy is the latest digital media business model (English translation of op ed in Politiken, August 2013)
– by Gry Hasselbalch If you mentioned privacy and data protection in a discussion about digital media business innovation, data portability and social sharing a few years ago, you would most certainly have been viewed as a spoilsport. But do the same today and you might actually assert yourself as a great innovator.
Privacy enhancing inventions – from the mobile bathing machine to the Anonymizer
“Privacy enhancing technology” is a new concept, but not a new invention. Throughout history conceptual, legal and societal challenges to the private sphere of people have always inspired innovative inventions.
Let’s start from the argument that the accumulation of data is an interference
With one eye on current global debates concerning state surveillance and specifically the NSA Prism scheme, my other eye squint with concern. The arguments put forward supporting schemes such as Prism emphasize the “safe guards” claimed to have been put in place by governments (they do not mention the “transparency” of such schemes, which is a key…
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