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Partnership on AI adds new organizations to its network

praskrishna — 2017-05-19T06:40:08Z

The Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society (Partnership on AI) is strengthening its network of partners by welcoming new organizations to share their diverse, unique perspectives on AI.

The blog post by Madison Moore was published in Software Development Times on May 17, 2017.

Earlier in the year, Partnership on AI brought in Apple and six nonprofit board members to serve on the board of directors. This week, the partnership announced that 22 new organizations will join the Partnership on AI, and these organizations will work and support the board of directors.

The Partnership on AI is welcoming eight new for-profit partners, including eBay, Intel, McKinsey & Company, Salesforce, SAP, Sony, and Zalando, along with the start-up Cogitai.

The fourteen non-profit Partners that joined include: Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, AI Forum of New Zealand, Center for Democracy & Technology, Centre for Internet and Society – India, Data & Society Research Institute, Digital Asia Hub, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, Future of Privacy Forum, Human Rights Watch, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, UNICEF, Upturn, and the XPRIZE Foundation.

Some of the representatives from these newly added organizations include Dr. Hiroaki Kitano, who is the head of Sony Computer Science Laboratories. Other collaborators include Chris Fabian, who leads the Ventures team in UNICEF’s Office of Innovation. SAP’s Dr. Markus Noga, who has led efforts applying machine learning to business problems, is also joining the partnership.

Additionally, the partnership will move forward with one other initiative, and that is to form a cross-conference “AI, People, and Society” Best Paper Award, and start an AI Grand Challenge series, which will focus on addressing long-term social and societal issues around artificial intelligence.

The partnership is also in the process of finding an executive director, and that person will oversee day-to-day operation of the organization.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/sd-times-may-17-partnership-on-ai-adds-new-organizations-to-its-network

Partnership on AI Adds Corporate, NGO Members, Charts Initial Course

praskrishna — 2017-05-19T06:00:15Z

Artificial intelligence is a booming business in 2017, but one that also comes with significant baggage in the form of public misunderstanding, potential job losses, and fear.

The blog post by Benjamin Roman was published by Xconomy on May 16, 2017.

Last fall, A.I. competitors Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, and Google banded together to form the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, an industry-led attempt to get ahead of the many social, ethical, and economic issues presented by the advent of technology with increasingly human-like capabilities. Apple joined the group as another founding member earlier this year.

On Tuesday, the Partnership on AI (PAI) announced nearly two dozen new members, including more of the tech industry’s biggest names—Intel, eBay, Salesforce, and SAP among them—and many of the world’s foremost A.I. research institutions, such as the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Also joining are nonprofits focused on digital privacy, human rights, and freedom. The full list of members is below.

The organization also outlined its initial plan of action, organized around seven “thematic pillars” (several of which hew closely to the AI principles agreed on by a gathering of researchers at the Asilomar conference earlier this year). The PAI pillars include safety, transparency, human-A.I. collaboration, economic and workforce impacts, and social and societal impacts.

After a recent board of directors retreat, the PAI plans: working groups to develop best practices by topic and sector; a fellowship for individuals at nonprofits and non-governmental organizations; an “AI, People, and Society” Best Paper Award; and a series of A.I. Grand Challenges aimed at “some of the most pressing long-term social and societal issues.”

The PAI is finding its organizational footing, but still has some big pieces missing: an executive director, for one.

While it was organized by the biggest names in technology and business, the PAI also aspires to be a “multi-stakeholder” organization and has welcomed into its fold the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Human Rights Watch.

It will be interesting to watch the degree to which these groups and their representatives to the PAI have sway over the organization’s direction, and the policy positions and best practices it puts forth—particularly on issues that could conflict with the business interests of its for-profit member companies.

PAI founding partners: Amazon, Apple, DeepMind, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft

Other for-profit partners: eBay, Intel, McKinsey & Company, Salesforce, SAP, Sony, Zalando, Cogitai

Nonprofit partners: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, ACLU, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, AI Forum of New Zealand, Center for Democracy & Technology, Centre for Internet and Society—India, Data & Society Research Institute, Digital Asia Hub, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, Future of Privacy Forum, Human Rights Watch, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, OpenAI, UNICEF, Upturn, the XPRIZE Foundation.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/x-conomy-benjamin-romano-may-16-2017-partnership-on-ai-adds-corporate-ngo-members-charts-initial-course

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praskrishna — 2013-09-23T07:33:45Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/partners.pdf

Parties give short shrift to privacy

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T05:54:11Z

Both the Congress and BJP vision documents disappoint, but the real surprise is the CPI-M document that deals with cyber issues in a substantial manner.

The article by Pratap Vikram Singh was published in GovernanceNow.com on April 12, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

For civil rights activists in the internet and cyber space, the election manifestoes of major political parties including the Congress and the BJP have come as a disappointment. Both the parties are mute on privacy. In the recent past there has been a vociferous demand for a strong legislation on privacy. A draft bill on privacy has been making rounds of the bureaucratic circle for three years. Manifestoes are also silent on the need for correction in the information technology act, which activists say is characterised by 'arbitrariness and lack of processes'.

“A healthy democracy gives equal weightage to transparency and privacy. It’s disappointing that the two parties have overlooked these two,” says Sunil Abraham, director of the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). Both Congress and BJP don’t mention about the lack of implementation of the open data policy. The policy, aka NDSAP 2012, requires all departments and ministries to put high value data sets in public domain within a few months of the policy enforcement. The parties are also silent on need for a balancing act on surveillance and civil liberty.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of Medianama.com, a portal posting news and analysis on digital media, says “The parties could have talked about reforming the IT legislation, especially the Section 79 and IT Rules 2011 which gives the intermediaries—the ISPs, websites, and cyber cafes—the power to strike down content without even hearing the author.” The law, currently, doesn’t provide a redressal mechanism to the author.

Similarly both parties are mute on internet governance, which has become a major global issue after the US showed willingness to cede its monopolistic oversight over the body governing the internet ICANN.

The Congress manifesto is also blank on making websites and systems accessible for specially-abled population, also called as e-accessibility. While the BJP too doesn’t talk about making government portals e-accessible, it speaks about the use of technology to deliver low cost quality education to specially-abled students. Issuance of universal identity cards for all applicable government benefits and disabled friendly access to public facilities are two other things which the party promises to implement if voted in power.

Both election manifestoes don’t mention concerns related to telecommunication sector. Broadband is the only term that appears in the two manifestoes. The Congress promises to bring high speed Internet to every village panchayat. This is not a new initiative; a project under DoT called national optical fibre network, NOFN, proposes to do the same. The BJP’s manifesto says, “Deployment of broadband in every village would be a thrust area.”

Both parties also talk about putting public services online. There is also nothing concrete about promotion of indigenous manufacturing in electronics and IT hardware. While there are serious omissions in the two manifestoes, the manifesto of the CPI-M surprises many, highlighting key issues concerning civil rights and liberty.

The manifesto talks about ‘demilitarisation of cyber space’ and ‘protecting Internet and telecommunications networks from cyber attacks and surveillance by building indigenous capability’. Edward Snowden’s revelation of the PRISM programme seems to be the context. It also talks about promoting ‘free software and other such new technologies which are free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or patents; knowledge commons should be promoted across disciplines, like biotechnology and drug discovery’.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/governance-now-april-12-2014-pratap-vikram-singh-parties-give-short-shrift-to-privacy