253 research outputs found
Exploring Digital Twins as Policy Tools: An Analysis of Emerging Initiatives
No full textCities are among the largest and most complex artefacts created by humans. Yet the advancements in computing capabilities combined with ubiquitous data streams allow for complex socio-technical systems of cities to be abstracted and modelled. This paper discusses the technology of Smart City Digital Twin as a policy tool. Following the ideas of flat ontology, the paper argues that intelligent machines exhibit their own agency, which has to be investigated through the behavioural lens. As making policy decisions based on counterfactual simulations is becoming more widespread, it is crucial not only to simulate how certain policy interventions will affect the life of a city but also to investigate how such models and simulations are designed and behave. Adding a social layer in the form of behavioural data of the population will allow Smart City Digital Twins to be used for a wider spectrum of policy modelling purposes. Such behavioural data can be generated through a task-based approach, where individuals will be asked to conduct certain activities in order to generate synthetic data for situations that require data that does not yet exist. This will not only allow to avoid certain privacy-related concerns but also can be used as a tool for labour provision
Reversing the logic of generative AI alignment: a pragmatic approach for public interest
No full textThe alignment of artificial intelligence (AI) systems with societal values and the public interest is a critical challenge in the field of AI ethics and governance. Traditional approaches, such as Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) and Constitutional AI, often rely on pre-defined high-level ethical principles. This article critiques these conventional alignment frameworks through the philosophical perspectives of pragmatism and public interest theory, arguing against their rigidity and disconnect with practical impacts. It proposes an alternative alignment strategy that reverses the traditional logic, focusing on empirical evidence and the real-world effects of AI systems. By emphasizing practical outcomes and continuous adaptation, this pragmatic approach aims to ensure that AI technologies are developed according to the principles that are derived from the observable impacts produced by technology applications
Governing AI through interaction: situated actions as an informal mechanism for AI regulation
No full textThis article presents a perspective that the interplay between high-level ethical principles, ethical praxis, plans, situated actions, and procedural norms influences ethical AI practices. This is grounded in six case studies, drawn from fifty interviews with stakeholders involved in AI governance in Russia. Each case study focuses on a different ethical principle—privacy, fairness, transparency, human oversight, social impact, and accuracy. The paper proposes a feedback loop that emerges from human-AI interactions. This loop begins with the operationalization of high-level ethical principles at the company level into ethical praxis, and plans derived from it. However, real-world implementation introduces situated actions—unforeseen events that challenge the original plans. These turn into procedural norms via routinization and feed back into the understanding of operationalized ethical principles. This feedback loop serves as an informal regulatory mechanism, refining ethical praxis based on contextual experiences. The study underscores the importance of bottom-up experiences in shaping AI's ethical boundaries and calls for policies that acknowledge both high-level principles and emerging micro-level norms. This approach can foster responsive AI governance, rooted in both ethical principles and real-world experiences
Situated usage of generative AI in policy education: implications for teaching, learning, and research
No full textThis study explores the contrasting sentiments towards the use of generative AI technologies among research postgraduate students in public policy. 14 interviews about the usage of generative AI technologies in the students’ research, teaching, and learning practices were conducted and used as the empirical data source for this project. Through qualitative and sentiment analysis, the research identified domains where students applied generative AI and discovered both positive and negative sentiments within the same application domains. The divergence in sentiments was interpreted using the ‘plans and situated actions’ framework, suggesting that technological expectations constrained by contextual environments lead to varied experiences of ‘enchantment’ and ‘disenchantment’. The findings emphasize the imperative for adaptable academic policies delineating acceptable AI usage in research, the implementation of discipline-specific AI training in universities, and the development of discipline-specific AI systems to cater to unique academic field needs.</p
The emergence of institutional architecture to govern AI : investigating the state’s role in digital capitalism
No full textNumerous governments issued policy and regulatory documents for AI in the last years to deal with opportunities and challenges posed by this technology. However, a systematic understanding of the roles that the governments are taking is lacking in the academic literature. The analysis of the global landscape of policy initiatives using qualitative content analysis and LDA topic modeling shows that the state has three major roles in governing AI: development, control, and promotion. The analysis of regulatory documents and game theoretic modeling shows that some countries prioritize consumer protection through stringent regulation. In contrast, others promote innovation by adopting a more hands-off approach when balancing a trade-off between regulation and innovation. However, minimal regulation is rationalizable only if a government is not prioritizing consumer welfare but tries to maximize innovation, domestic producer surplus, or perceived consumer welfare. Russia presents an interesting case where the state takes on the role of “development” by actively participating in technological innovation. At the same time, it implements a hands-off approach to regulation through unenforceable ethical principles. Fifty interviews with AI companies, academics, and policymakers in Russia show that companies have little motivation to comply with ethical regulations. The major motivational constraints are profit-seeking behavior for economic motivation, ethical ignorance for normative motivation, lack of credible threat for social motivation, and technological infeasibility for technological motivation. This regulatory regime was formed under the strong influence of big tech companies, which saw an opportunity to avoid regulatory oversight by washing out concrete regulatory measures from the policy. Unenforceable ethics-based self-regulation is a regulatory gift from the Russian government to the industry. By applying the lens of the regulation theory, this form of the state’s intervention in the governance of the socio-technical system is conceptualized as a regulatory regime under the accumulation regime of digital capitalism.</p
Academicianul Gleb Drăgan - savant de talie internaţională
No full textAcademicianul Gleb Drăgan a fost fondatorul Școlii de Tehnica Tensiunilor Înalte și al Laboratorului de Tehnica Tensiunilor Înalte din România. El este autorul a 33 de cărţi și coordonatorul Tratatului de Tensiuni Înalte în trei volume. El a editat 32 de dictionare explicative de terminilogie tehnică, precum și sute de studii ştiinţifice şi tehnice, articole prezentate la congrese şi conferinţe în România sau în afara ei, în special, în domeniul energetic, al descărcărilor electrice coronă, comutărilor de supratensiuni, supratensiuni atmosferice etc. De asemenea, a editat două monografii în care este descrisă tragedia familiilor basarabene deportate. Profesorul Gleb Drăgan a fost membru al Academiei Române şi al Academiei de Ştiinţe Tehnice din România, Membru Onorific al Academiei de Ştiinţe a Moldovei, Doctor Honoris Causa al Universităţii Tehnice a Moldovei şi al Universităţii Tehnice din Oradea, membru şi membru onorific în diferite organizaţii nonguvernamentale naţionale şi internaţionale.Academician Gleb Drăgan was the founder of the High Voltage Engineering School and the High Voltage Engineering Laboratory in Romania. He is the author of 33 technical books and coordinator of the High Voltage Treaty in three volumes. He edited 32 explanatory dictionaries of technical terminology, hundreds of technical and scientific studies and articles presented at congresses and conferences in the country and abroad, mainly dealing with electric power field, corona discharges, switching surges, atmospheric switching over voltages etc. He is also the author of two chronicles describing the tragedies of the deported Besssarabian families. Professor Gleb Dragan was member of the Romanian Academy and member of the Academy of Technical Sciences of Romania, Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, Doctor Honoris Causa of the Technical University of Moldova and member of the Technical University of Oradea, member and honorary member in several prominent national and international non-governmental organizations
Znaczenie prochnicy dla zyznosci gleb
No full textPublikacja zawiera krótki przegląd najważniejszych prac poświęconych materii organicznej gleb, procesom humifikacji oraz wpływowi nawożenia na próchnicę; głównie prac stanowiących 40-letni dorobek naukowy Autora.This paper is a short review of some most important works concerning organic matter in soil and its transformation to humus.but mainly it is the review of the projects which the Author has been doing during forty years of his work on this subject
The challenges of industry self-regulation of AI in emerging economies: Implications of the case of Russia for public policy and institutional development
No full textThe widespread utilization of AI technologies urges governments worldwide to design governance structures for it. Industry self-regulation is one of the approaches most often suggested for this task, as it allows flexibility in balancing innovation and safety. This book chapter discusses how self-regulatory approaches popular for the governance of AI can potentially be problematic for emerging economies. The findings are derived from the fieldwork conducted in Russia in 2021-2022. The key challenges include the need for more technical expertise within the government, the lack of civil liberties, the interwovenness between the public and the private sector, the lack of motivation for ethical development, and protectionism over the local IT industry. Some initial remedies for the shortcomings of the industry self-regulation for AI in emerging economies can be found in how governments mitigate the negative effects of regulatory capture. These include promoting greater balance and diversity in the competition among different stakeholders, reforming the institutional context within which regulators operate, and opening up the regulatory process to various external checks and balances
Prawna ochrona zdolności produkcyjnej gleb – zagadnienia wybrane
No full textThe subject of the article is the legal aspects of protecting the productive capacity of soils. The study is of a scientific and research nature. The author starts from the statement that soils perform, in particular, environmental, economic, social and cultural functions, while for the protection of the characteristics that determine the possibility of using soils in food production, production functions, combined with the production function of agriculture, are important. Thus, the purpose of the analysis is to determine whether current Polish legislation sufficiently takes into account the need to protect the productive capacity of soils, understood as the possibility of sustainable use of these resources for food production. Consideration of this issue leads to the conclusion that the current legislation does not sufficiently take into account the need to protect the productive functions of soils, while a certain degree of protection is assumed by draft EU legislation on, among other things, soil monitoring granting Member States a significant role in tracking, assessing and managing the condition of soils.Przedmiotem badania w artykule są prawne aspekty ochrony zdolności produkcyjnej gleb. Opracowanie ma charakter naukowo-badawczy. Autorka wychodzi od stwierdzenia, że gleby pełnią zwłaszcza funkcje środowiskowe, gospodarcze, społeczne i kulturowe, a z punktu widzenia ochrony cech warunkujących możliwość wykorzystania gleb w produkcji żywności ważna są funkcje produkcyjne, łączące się z funkcją produkcyjną rolnictwa. Celem analizy jest ustalenie, czy obowiązujące polskie prawodawstwo dostatecznie uwzględnia potrzebę ochrony zdolności produkcyjnej gleb, rozumianej jako możliwość zrównoważonego wykorzystywania tych zasobów do produkcji żywności. Rozważania nad tym zagadnieniem prowadzą do wniosku, że tak nie jest, natomiast pewien zakres ochrony zakładają projekty unijnych aktów prawnych, m.in. w sprawie monitorowania gleb, przyznający państwom członkowskim znaczącą rolę w śledzeniu i ocenie stanu gleb oraz zarządzaniu nimi
The state’s role in governing artificial intelligence: development, control, and promotion through national strategies
No full textAbstractNumerous governments worldwide have issued national artificial intelligence (AI) strategies in the last five years to deal with the opportunities and challenges posed by this technology. However, a systematic understanding of the roles and functions that the governments are taking is lacking in the academic literature. Therefore, this research uses qualitative content analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling methodologies to investigate the texts of 31 strategies from across the globe. The findings of the qualitative content analysis highlight thirteen functions of the state, which include human capital, ethics, R&D, regulation, data, private sector support, public sector applications, diffusion and awareness, digital infrastructure, national security, national challenges, international cooperation, and financial support. We combine these functions into three general themes, representing the state’s role: development, control, and promotion. LDA topic modeling results are also reflective of these themes. Each general theme is present in every national strategy’s text, but the proportion they occupy in the text is different. The combined typology based on two methods reveals that the countries from the post-soviet bloc and East Asia prioritize the theme “development,” highlighting the high level of the state’s involvement in AI innovation. The countries from the EU focus on “control,” which reflects the union’s hard stance on AI regulation, whereas countries like the UK, the US, and Ireland emphasize a more hands-off governance arrangement with the leading role of the private sector by prioritizing “promotion.
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