Welcome to this week’s Appropriate Future, a roundup of news and info on AI, data and algorithms, and its impact on the planet, humans, privacy, and public policy. In today’s edition: Continued calls for regulating high risk AI; Privacy vs. Pandemic data; and tracking schoolkids at home.
If you know of anyone that might be interested in the topic - please share!
Ban the algorithms that threaten our human rights. UN's human rights chief Michelle Bachelet is pushing for a ban on AI applications that are contrary to international human rights law (specifically calling out applications in surveillance, discrimination, and biometrics). Since safeguards aren't in place yet to make sure that the technology is used responsibly, governments should rein in artificial intelligence as a matter of urgency. ‣ zdnet.com
Technological progress does not have to come at the expense of safety, security, fairness, or transparency. In fact, embedding our values into technological development is central to our economic competitiveness and national security. Our federal government has the responsibility to work with private industry to ensure that we are able to maximize the benefits of AI technology for society while simultaneously managing its emerging risks.
The Path to Fairer AI Starts With Audits, Standards. Government needs to establish clear procedures for vetting high-risk AI systems for bias and discriminatory impacts, said the report “Cracking Open the Black Box” from New America’s Open Technology Institute. ‣ govtech.com
Biden's FTC is adding a staunch critic of facial recognition tech.Alvaro Bedoya, a professor at Georgetown Law, previously served as lawyer for a U.S. Senate subcommittee on tech privacy, and is an outspoken critic of surveillance technology’s use in law enforcement. ‣ inputmag.com
How data, analytics, and AI power public health. The pandemic has put a spotlight on how big data and analytics technologies are being used in the public health sector. ‣ gcn.com
Pandemic tech left out public health experts.
“Singapore said, ‘We’re not going to use your data for other things.’ Then they changed it, and they’re using it for law enforcement purposes. And the app, which started out as voluntary, is now needed to get into office buildings, schools, and so on. There is no choice but for the government to know who you’re spending time with.”
An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning — and Now Won’t Leave.
The data, gleaned from those 1,300 incident reports in the first six months of the crisis, highlight how Gaggle’s team of content moderators subject children to relentless digital surveillance long after classes end for the day, including on weekends, holidays, late at night and over the summer. In fact, only about a quarter of incidents were reported to district officials on school days between 8 a.m and 4 p.m., bringing into sharp relief how the service extends schools’ authority far beyond their traditional powers to regulate student speech and behavior, including at home.
The collection of news and links provided in Appropriate Future is undertaking a bit of retooling and refocusing — specifically to target a single subset of our previous range of topics — on AI, data and algorithms, and its impact on the planet, humans, privacy and public policy. If you know of anyone that might be interested in the topic - please share!
People should not be slaves to machines: The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act — the most significant international effort to regulate AI to date — has asked groups to weigh in on designating “high risk” AI, and the European Evangelical Alliance has some opinions. ‣ Khari Johnson in wired.com
The oxymoron of the day: Algorithmic Humanitarianism. Use of AI in adjudicating refugee procedures and immigration decisions is “an idea suffering from the mechanical, technocratic, and scientific acclimatization of human existence devoid of ethics, justice, and morality,” says Dr. Nafees Ahmad of South Asian University (SAARC)-New Delhi. “In human rights protection, refugee rights, and immigration decisions, AI has been adversely impacting Refugee Status Determination (RSD) procedures and immigration judgments across the world.” ‣ moderndiplomacy.eu
Democracy Is Losing Its Race With Disruption.
Many politicians appear uncertain whether to get cozy with the visionary leaders of Google, Apple, and Facebook—or to campaign against the pollution of the American information ecosystem, the amplification of hate speech and harassment, and the striking concentration of market power among a small number of companies. ‣ theatlantic.com
With the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban got hold of US military’s biometric records of Afghan citizens who had been helping the US forces in the country, and who now face the risk of being targeted by the Taliban. Can governments and militaries responsibly and securely handle biometric records? ‣ Usama Kjilji in aljazeera.com
We are on the cusp of one of the most dangerous arms races in human history:
Where the ethical battle is hottest, however, is in relation to “human-out-of-the-loop” systems: completely autonomous devices operating on land, under the sea or in the air, programmed to seek, identify and attack targets without any human oversight after the initial programming and launch. The more general term used to describe these systems is “robotic weapons,” and for the attacking kind “lethal autonomous weapons” (LAWs). There is a widespread view that they could be in standard operational service before the mid-21st century. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in their development by a mixture of the US, China, Russia and the UK.
Venture Beat has interviews with the six winners of their Women in AI awards, including Soltani Panah, who is working on how AI can tackle complex social problems ‣ venturebeat.com
Human rights climb the business school curriculum ‣ Andrew Jack in ft.com
Should government use the web to nudge our behaviour? ‣ Alex Hern in The Guardian
Welcome to this week’s edition of Appropriate Future, a weekly review of the convergence of sustainability, innovation, technology and public policy in the news.
Pumping misinformation through social media is a gigantic topic these days. The biggest at the moment is its contribution to the spread of the Delta variant in the willfully unvaccinated (looking at you, Mercola). But social media, where grassroots user-driven content is easily astroturfed via paid advertising channels, is now corporatized as the most modern version of what we once quaintly called “public relations”.
Multiple states and municipalities have sued fossil fuel companies over their contribution to and deception about the dangers of global warming. [Maxine Joselow in E&E News]
“When fossil fuel companies run ads telling New York City consumers and residents about their commitment to clean energy, but then tell their investors that they plan to substantially increase fossil fuel production over 10, 20, or 30 years, that’s greenwashing. That kind of behavior violates New York City’s Consumer Protection Law, and that’s why we’re asking the court to hold these companies accountable.”
Hilary Meltzer, chief of the Environmental Law Division of the New York City Law Department
Meanwhile, many corporations are embracing a climate pledge, with over half the Fortune 500 having already announced emissions targets, which makes for splashy opportunities in the press. [Jocelyn Timperly in The Guardian]
Corporations are losing the ability to merely issue feel-good statements and not deliver results. An MSCI analysis found that many corporations are still on course to exceed the total amount of emissions they can release and still keep in line with 1.5C of warming within the next six years. Hopefully, investor and consumer attention will not wane, and we can all collectively “keep the heat on” (so to speak) corporations to follow through. [MSCI Net Zero Tracker]
On to the links and news.
Sustainability
· Oceans must be recognized for their important role in limiting climate change, scientists say. Up to 200 million metric tons of CO2 could be captured annually by mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes and kelp forests. [Sara Schonhardt in Scientific American]
· Wildfires in Oregon and Washington are burning through acres of forest that were used as carbon storage to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. [Debra Kahn, Lorraine Woellert and Catherine Boudreau,in Politico]
· Rethinking plastic waste to curb CO2, with a focus on building circular economies for cement, aluminum, steel, plastics and food. [Jill Martin in Sustainable Brands]
· The Indiana Department of Transportation and Purdue University wants to build a stretch of highway that would charge electric cars as they drive with magnetic concrete. [Rebecca Thiele in WFYI]
· Microsoft India to deploy new AI model for predicting urban heatwave risks in India. An earlier model was successfully tested for cyclones and floods in disaster prone coastal areas in the country. [Economic Times]
· Navigator CO2 Ventures and other propose building pipelines from North Dakota to Illinois to capture carbon dioxide at ethanol refineries and transport to sites where it could be buried thousands of feet underground. [Stephen Groves, AP]
Tech + Policy meet at the continued fallout from the NSO/Pegasus project revelations [overview via The Verge]:
Amnesty International calls for a moratorium on the sale and use of surveillance technology. Government use of Israeli malware to spy on journalists, activists and heads of state have “exposed a global human rights crisis” [Al Jazeera]
“The law of the jungle cannot prevail any longer. The Pegasus affair must serve as the trigger for adopting a general moratorium on the surveillance technology exports and for starting work on an international regulation worthy of the name.” [Iris de Villars, Reporters Without Borders]
But, we’ve known about Pegasus and NSO for years [see VICE article from 2018, or NYT Opinion in 2019]. What’s changed? The exposure that customers are not just using it to track criminals, but to instead track political rivals — instead of a way to protect people, it’s being used to protect people in power.
NSO’s statement: “Millions of people around the world are sleeping well at night, and safely walking in the streets, thanks to Pegasus and similar technologies which help intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies around the world to prevent and investigate crime, terrorism, and paedophilia rings that are hiding under the umbrella of end-to-end encryption apps.” [Business Standard]
· Worried about your increased use of Netflix and Zoom on your carbon footprint? Reducing your app, thus data center power usage, at an individual level isn’t going to save the planet. [Sara Kiley Watson in PopSci]
· That’s not to say data centers are like a neighborhood lemonade stand in the scheme of things: the data center industry consumes 200 TWh of electricity (that’s a lot) and growing. They also use a lot of water to keep buildings cool, and burn diesel onsite for supplemental power. Companies need a solid sustainability strategy at work in their data centers. [Chris Pennington in Data Center Dynamics]
· And that’s also not to say that the footprint of streaming your favorite show isn’t without a massive long tail that contributes mightily to emissions: from mining the minerals needed to build your phone, to the economies that provide the labor to assemble them, all the way through the labyrinth of math that powers the you-might-also-like recommendations. It might seem like ephemeral pixels on a screen, but there’s a supply chain that is more reality than virtual. [Definitely check out from 2018, Crawford & Joler, Anatomy of an AI System]
Public Policy
· The people of Appalachia need to be at the table, and not on the menu, when it comes to a clean energy transformation. [Ted Boettner in Clean Technica]
· The Russian government adopts its first-ever greenhouse gas law as a part of a national climate package, which also includes the possible participation of Russian companies in international carbon trading under the Paris Climate Agreement. [Global Compliance]
· Ramping up investment in policies and technologies to tackle climate change could play a significant role in the global economy’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. “Effectively by 2030 the cost of renewable electricity is going to be half that of coal and gas sourced electricity,” Charles Dumas, chief economist at U.K.-based investment research firm TS Lombard. [Jonathan Keane in CNBC]
· The German National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) targets ~40% of the funds on fostering zero-emissions mobility, developing hydrogen capabilities and enabling climate-friendly construction and renovation. [Christoph P. Kiefer in Eurasia Review]
Welcome to this week’s edition of AppropriateFuture, a weekly review of the convergence of technology, sustainability, innovation, and public policy in the news.
Sometimes topics expand in a given week, as the idiom goes, to suck all the air out of the room. In this case it’s the dominance of direct air carbon capture — literally sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere — that is getting press, investment, and criticism:
The carbon-capture chemistry we have today is too expensive. It works, and it makes economic sense in a few settings. But to meet the global-consensus goal of net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and dodge the worst consequences of climate change, we need to deploy more than 150 times as much carbon-capture capacity as we have now. That means reducing costs and making more options available for a wide range of CO2 emission sources.
The main criticism is that betting on carbon capture, at this point, is too risky to bet the planet on. But it is undoubtedly true that carbon capture in some form will be a big and profitable market — thus investment has exploded (see below for $$ on VC in Clean Tech, too), a sampling of investment announced this week:
Storrega Geotechnologies has raised funds to design and built it’s flagship Acorn project, to collect carbon dioxide emissions from industries across Scotland for storage in depleted North Sea reservoirs. [Mark Williamson in The Glasgow Herald]
Black & Veatch receives $2.5 million in federal funding to advance direct air capture (DAC) technology. [Yahoo Finance]
Bill Gates’ clean energy advocacy group Breakthrough Energy, has launched a new finance vehicle to support long-duration storage capable of storing energy for months at a time, sustainable aviation fuels, direct air capture of carbon dioxide and making green hydrogen much cheaper than the alternative. [Renewables Now]
Sustainability
Good news: Last year, the world’s renewable electricity generation capacity grew at a record pace, with 358 TWh of capacity added, and demand for fossil-fuel-fired electricity generation has peaked across developing nations. Also, El Salvador’s first major wind project began operating at a commercial scale. [Sustainability Success Stories of The Week in Edie; also from the NRDC]
Virgin Money's Clydesdale Bank has invested £6 million to acquire Richard Maxwell Limited, and accelerate supply of renewable heating to bespoke poultry sheds by replacing fossil fuel heating with either wood chip or pellet systems. [Gordon Davidson in The Scottish Farmer]
Blyth, a former industrial port and coal town which is now home to some of the first offshore wind farms in the UK, is hosting an art exhibition which aims to foster discussion about the changes, and encourage reflection on renewable energy. [Laureen Fagan in Sustainability Times]
Innovation and 💰
Investors have already closed as many climate-focused funds as were raised during the previous five years combined. In the first half of 2021 VC-backed climate tech companies have raised more than $14.2 billion worldwide— almost 90% of the total for all of 2020. [Priyamvada Mathur in Pitchbook]
Ubuntoo, raises a $3.3M seed round to build a marketplace between those working on sustainability goals at large corporations, government bureaus, etc., with startups and researchers who are coming up with new and novel ways to make the world more sustainable. [Maija Ehlinger in Hypepotamus]
For the past decade clean tech startups, especially due to the 2011 failure of Solyndra, have been struggling to raise the funds needed for takeoff. But a new flood of cash is helping startups get from laboratory to market. [Scott Patterson in the WSJ]
Technology
Three big stories this week out of the crossing point of Big Tech and Everyone is Just A Data Source:
But Facebook still isn’t sharing a key statistic: how many people have seen vaccine misinformation on the platform. It's part of a broader pattern of little transparency from the company, which has sought to downplay its role in spreading vaccine misinformation amid growing pressure from the White House and the surgeon general. Independent researchers and journalists have pressed the company for years to make more data available so they can study the impact of Facebook on society.
But then, (#2):
News about the Pegasus data leak, powered by software from the Israeli firm NSO Group, which can enable keystroke monitoring (i.e. email, text, passwords), tracking phone calls and location, and hijacking the microphone and camera. Governments used its software to target journalists, dissidents and opposition politicians. [Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley in the NYT]
The UN human rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet said the use of spying software targeted at journalists and politicians was “extremely alarming” and confirmed “some of the worst fears” surrounding the misuse of such technology. If recent allegations about the use of Pegasus are even partly true, she maintained that the “red line has been crossed again and again with total impunity”. [The United Nations News]
But, you don’t need to be an evil government to spy on people. You can just buy private phone tracking data extracted from mobile ad systems (#3):
Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill was ousted as general secretary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops when de-anonymized mobile phone location data was publicly reported, revealing sensitive and previously private details about his life.
Burrill’s case is “hugely significant,” said Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Information Privacy Center: “It’s a clear and prominent example of the exact problem that folks in my world, privacy advocates and experts, have been screaming from the rooftops for years, which is that uniquely identifiable data is not anonymous.” [The Pillar]
Public Policy
Advocates are disappointed with Senate Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget resolution. They say it doesn't do enough to tackle global warming. [Rachel Frazin in The Hill]
Critics accuse Shell and other major oil firms of funding tens of millions of dollars to the American Petroleum Institute as cover for the industry, who lobbies behind the scenes in Congress to stall or weaken environmental legislation. [Chris McGreal in The Guardian’s Climate Crime]
Renewed federal focus on ESG issues will bolster the SEC’s effort to create new rules, such as: firms that want to go public may have to seriously consider board diversity or environmental reporting in conjunction with — or well in advance of — their debuts. [Anthony Cimino in Techcrunch]
“Now we’ve entered into this new paradigm where the environment is changing fast, and our infrastructure is not designed to change quickly.”: Urban centers are more prone to flooding than other areas because streets, parking lots, and buildings don’t allow water to seep into the ground the way it would in a forest or grassland. Stormwater infrastructure around the country is aging, and many governments have resorted to piecemeal solutions, as proper modernization would cost in the billions. [Casey Crownhart in MIT Tech Review]
And Finally, The Good Link: Via the venerable BoingBoing
Welcome to this week’s edition of AppropriateFuture, a weekly review of the convergence of technology, sustainability, innovation, and public policy.
Portions of the Amazon rainforest are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they absorb: deforestation and an accelerating warming trend have contributed to change in the carbon balance. [John Schwartz in The New York Times] (emphasis mine)
In recent years, a growing number of studies have suggested that the region’s ability to remove carbon from the air and store it so it won’t contribute to rising global temperatures, is being degraded. A 30-year study in the journal Nature published in 2015 found that the Amazon’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide is showing “a long-term decreasing trend of carbon accumulation,” in part because of greater climate variability and earlier deaths of trees.
And a 2018 essay in the journal Science Advances warned that the combination of deforestation, climate change and burning have caused parts of the rainforest to shift to savanna: “The precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we,” the authors wrote, adding, “we stand exactly in a moment of destiny: The tipping point is here, it is now.”
Probably unrelated: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro hospitalized after 10 days of hiccups. [Sammy Westfall, WaPo]
Sustainability
◦ Sustainability execs speak out: BlackRock's former chief investment officer Tariq Fancy says he was rebuked by a colleague for not sticking to the talking points of simply saying their low-carbon funds are a way for clients to contribute to the fight against climate change, even though there wasn’t an explanation of how. [Saijel Kishan in Bloomberg Green]
◦ Direct air capture (DAC) is getting closer to reality, but realistically must be powered by clean energy sources because it requires so much energy. Power costs remain a significant stumbling block to broad deployment. [Karin Rives in S&P Global]
◦ South Africa is facing some of the worst blackouts on record. The proposed twenty year, US$13.3 billion dollar solution is five power ships operating on liquified natural gas. The deal's proposed 20-year contract could lead to higher emissions. [TechXplore]
◦ Solar power faces a fundamental challenge that could halt the industry's breakneck growth. The more solar you add to the grid, the less valuable it becomes. California is already experiencing what's known as solar value deflation for the first time in its history. [James Temple in MIT Tech Review]
◦ "The iron and steel industry is responsible for 11% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and will need to change rapidly to align with the world’s climate goals." Caitlin Swalec, a research analyst at Global Energy Monitor. [Lloyd Alter in Tree Hugger]
◦ The Sea of Marmara in Istanbul found itself suffocated by mucilage, a naturally produced phytoplankton slime usually consumed by jellyfish and sea cucumbers. [Carlotta Gall in The New York Times]
Innovation
◦ MIT professor Asegun Henry has a plans for a "sun-in-a-box" system, which would serve as a rechargeable battery. Currently he is building a lab-scale version of the system which could supply electricity on cloudy days. [Jennifer Chu via MIT News Office]
◦ Gaming company Razer is working with ocean waste cleaning enterprise ClearBot to tackle marine plastic pollution with an AI robot that will be able to identify different kinds of plastic and collect them for proper disposal. [Tanuvi Joe in Green Queen]
◦ Vaayu is a carbon tracking platform aimed at retailers. The Berlin based company has raised $1.57 million in pre-seed funding from CapitalT, Atomico and several angels. [Mike Butcher in TechCrunch]
◦ Mighty Buildings has raised an additional $22M to accelerate their carbon neutrality roadmap. They are a construction technology company using 3D printing, advanced materials, and robotic automation to build homes. [PRNewswire]
◦ Energy as a service (EaaS) is the combination of technology and energy that operates as a subscription service. The customer pays for a bundle of energy technologies, rather than the amount of electricity it consumes. [Kate Zerrenner in Triple Pundit]
◦ Atlanta-based startup Cloverly announces a $2.1 million seed round. The company, which provides an API that helps companies measure and then offset their carbon emission, has hired former eBay exec Jason Rubottom as CEO. [Ron Miller in TechCrunch]
◦ Sea6 Energy has secured $9 million in funding. Their SeaCombine can harvest and replant seaweed in deep ocean waters. [The Fish Site]
Technology
◦ Developers must work with people to create a product that is 'human intuitive' and not 'machine intuitive', according to a report written by the UK’s former surveillance camera commissioner. [Sebastian Kovig Skelton in Computer Weekly]
◦ China tightens rules about computer vulnerabilities. New rules, in effect Sept. 1st, will ban private sector experts who find "zero day" security weaknesses from selling that information. [Joe McDonald, ABC News]
◦ Israeli digital intelligence firm, Cellebrite, is going public. What do they say they do? The tech "may be used by customers in a way that is, or that is perceived to be, incompatible with human rights." [Shoshanna Solomon in Times of Israel]
Public Policy
◦ US Department of Commerce sanctions 14 Chinese tech companies over human rights abuses, including a firm backed by Sequoia Capital. DeepGlint co-founded a facial recognition lab with Chinese authorities in Urumqi. [Dave Gershgorn in The Verge]
◦ The European Union plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2035. Big, big impact on businesses: Steel producers, cement makers will pay for every ton of carbon dioxide their factories emit; Cargo ships may not be able to dock in Rotterdam or Hamburg unless they run on clean fuels. [Jack Ewing, Stanley Reed and Liz Alderman in The New York Times]
◦ New York plans to explore the potential role of green hydrogen (hydrogen produced using renewable energy, including wind, solar, and hydroelectricity) as part of the State's comprehensive decarbonization strategy. $12.5 million will be made available for long duration energy storage technologies and demonstration projects that may include green hydrogen. [New York State]
◦ About 13,000 renewable energy projects in nearly 50 countries are waiting for finance - and could create up to 10 million green jobs. The biggest impact would be for workers in China and the US. [Megan Rowling in the World Economic Forum]
◦ Found by FOIA: Last year, representatives from ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Equinor and BP met with the then UK trade minister for a private dinner in Texas where natural gas was championed as a “vital part of the solution” to tackling climate change — seeking a gas ‘compromise’ ahead of COP26. [Siobhan Kennedy in 4 News]
◦ The Circular Car Initiative aims to create a circular economy in the automotive industry by 2030. The initiative involves materials suppliers, fleet operators, manufacturers, recyclers and data platforms. [Antonella Ilaria Totaro in Green Biz]
And Finally, The Good Link: In case you missed flying over the last year, you don’t have to rush to the airport to get a taste of it.