1,721,564 research outputs found
Accountability as mourning: Accounting for death in the time of COVID-19
Full text linkIn view of the increasing coronavirus death toll around the globe, centralized governments have been put under the spotlight to account for the deaths in the sovereign states they represent. But could it be a problem if we simply hold governments accountable for deaths by demanding accurate and transparent accounting of the total? Is there a better way to account for deaths in a pandemic without ignoring the pathos of loss and undermining our capacity to act spontaneously? I engage with these questions by looking at how the ethics/politics of death, as two sides of the same coin, affect our understanding of accountability in the time of COVID-19. I distinguish between two types of accountability that correspond to the two meanings of “account for”: “to explain the reason or the cause of something” and “to form part of a total” (Cambridge Dictionary). The second type of accountability, informed by a Deleuzian ethics of death, is explored through an interpretative case study of accounting for the deaths in Wuhan, where the global pandemic began. It shows that accountability is essentially a freedom-enabled endeavour to account for deaths through our repetition in mourning, which forms part of honouring the dead, the dying and the living. This new configuration implies that a more radical form of accounting is needed in order to appreciate the value of life and be mindful of the socio-psychological costs associated with deaths
From facilitating normalization to tackling inequalities: re-configuring the role of accountability in epidemic governance
No full textYU-AI: Constraint-Based Explanations of Artificial Intelligence Failure
No full textYU–AI (Constraint-Based Artificial Intelligence)
YU–AI is a theoretical research program that develops a constraint-first account of artificial intelligence failure, reliability, and alignment. It challenges representational and optimization-centric explanations and analyzes AI behaviour in terms of constraint enforcement and persistence. The program is structured as a staged investigation of explanation, perception, and long-horizon stability. YU–AI is part of the broader YU: Constraint-Based Cognition & Temporal Tense project.
Program Overview
YU–AI develops a constraint-first account of artificial intelligence behaviour, failure, and reliability. The program argues that many widely discussed AI failures—such as hallucination, misalignment, and long-horizon instability—are not incidental engineering defects but structural consequences of systems that satisfy perceptual regularities without enforcing exclusion over time.
Rather than proposing new architectures or optimization strategies, YU–AI provides diagnostic criteria that rule out entire classes of insufficient explanations. The goal is not to improve AI performance directly, but to clarify what must be structurally present for reliability, grounding, and long-term stability to be possible.
The program unfolds across a small number of tightly related papers, released in stages, each addressing a distinct dimension of failure:
• explanation,
• perception,
• and temporal persistence.
YU–AI is part of the broader YU (Constraint-Based Cognition) project, which studies cognition, intelligence, and explanation across biological, artificial, and non-living systems without appeal to representation or mentalistic primitives.
Included Papers
• YU–AI-1 — The Explanatory Constraint Knife
Defines explanation as exclusion and shows why representational accounts fail
Digital surveillance in post‐coronavirus China: A feminist view on the price we pay
Full text linkIn this piece, I look at the question — are we worth saving and if so at what cost? — through a Foucault‐inspired feminist lens on surveillance. I examine a case that illustrates how digital surveillance, despite being perceived as a successful development in China’s response to COVID‐19, reinforces the country’s gender‐biased discourses on contagious disease and sexuality. In doing so, I want to emphasize that the states of exception that governments can establish and extend are not gender‐neutral. Given the feminist interest in and responsibility for life, this fact compels us to react to states of exception from a freedom‐enabled gender perspective. It is to be hoped that this perspective would then help to promote socio‐political practices that allowed society to challenge the normalizing male gaze induced by digital surveillance
Intellectual capital and support for collaborative decision making in small and medium enterprises
No full textThis paper explores how collaborative decision-making can be improved through expanding decision makers’ ability to access and process information related to intellectual capital. We describe the ICS (Intellectual Capital Statement) Process, and supporting ICS toolkit developed by Partners in the InCaS EU project. We describe how they were validated in practice to provide an open, semi-structured methodology designed to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) decide on their strengths and weaknesses regarding intellectual capital and its use within the firm. We also describe the creation and emergence of InCapedia, an interactive encyclopaedia for authoring, representing, accessing and communicating anything and everything to do with intellectual capital. We show how, together, InCapedia and the ICS toolkit support both the enhancement of contextual knowledge and the development of proceduralised contexts, and thus have the potential to nurture all aspects of collaborative decision processes in SMEs.La présente étude explore la manière dont la prise de décisions partagée peut bénéficier d'une plus grande capacité des preneurs de décision à accéder et à traiter les informations liées au capital intellectuel. Les auteurs présentent le processus de bilan des connaissances développé par les partenaires du projet européen InCaS et décrivent comment cet outil a été validé sur le terrain, offrant une méthodologie ouverte et semi-structurée, créée pour aider les PME à comprendre l’usage de leur capital intellectuel, et à identifier les forces et les faiblesses de leur entreprise. L’article expose également comment InCapedia permet la création et l’émergence libre d'une encyclopédie interactive pour écrire, représenter, accéder et communiquer toutes informations sur le sujet du capital intellectuel. L’élaboration d'InCapedia et du bilan des connaissances soutien l’amélioration des savoirs contextuels et le développement de contextes procéduriers, et donc, a le potentiel de nourrir tous les aspects du processus de prise de décision partagée au sein des PME
From measuring to learning? – Probing the evolutionary path of IC research and practice
No full textIn line with an emerging critical trend in the field of intellectual capital (IC), the aim of this paper is to probe the evolutionary path of IC research and practices. The paper aims to argue that IC research and practices need to shift from the measuring paradigm to a learning paradigm. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 15 interviews with experienced IC consultants were conducted while they were all working on a European Commission funded IC project across five European countries from 2005 to 2008. Altogether their voices constitute a critical line of thought. Findings: The findings showed that a learning paradigm does not take a stand against the measuring paradigm, however it does transform the measuring paradigm, as it takes it to a new level of understanding by engaging a firm's attention to the socio-psychological mechanism that generates and sustains IC flows. IC flows entail new knowledge flows, practice flows, and affect flows that elicit organizational change and innovation. Practical implications: The paper discusses two implications of this research. First, effective IC flow management may strengthen a firm's future earning potential by allowing for value-added activities and by nurturing a strong learning motive. Second, three criteria for IC information disclosure are proposed to work around the issue of management control and/or public relations manipulation. The paper suggests that the design and implementation of IC models within a reporting framework should aim to make the concept of IC more accessible, actionable, and effective. Originality/value: This paper offers a novel conceptual framework and an operational context which explore the possible ways of advancing IC research and practices
Affordances of social media in collective action: the case of Free Lunch for Children in China
No full textThis paper studies the socialised affordances of social media in the processes of collective action, exploring the role of technology in the under-researched area of civil society. We examine the case of Free Lunch for Children (FL4C), a charitable programme in China based on the microblogging platform, Weibo. Adopting the perspective of affordances-for-practice, we draw upon the collective action model to better understand the sociomaterial practices and social processes involving social media, and seek to address the ‘when’ and ‘how’ questions of affordances. The study generates theoretical and practical implications for understanding the role of social media in social transformation
Sustainable collaboration between Chinese and British design museums: seeking temporal legitimacy from two tales of values of design
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