For the third consecutive year, ICT4Peace was invited to lecture as part of the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Public Governance and Administration Course conducted by the Swiss School of Public Governance at ETH. Special Advisor Sanjana Hattotuwa conducted all the lectures in the day-long module.
The course brings participants from nearly two dozen countries for an intensive 16-day learning experience, and as noted online, the programme is structured around innovative, competency-based learning experiences, including simulations, peer-to-peer learning, excursions and best-practices analyses, as well as expert lectures and group discussions.
As ICT4Peace noted in the agenda for the class lectures,
This module examines the implications of digital technologies on governance and public administration. Participants are introduced to how Big Data can be leveraged for decision making and will discuss challenges and opportunities in digitally delivering service to citizens (e-governance). Both the positive and disruptive effects of social media, including misinformation and fake news, as well as other technologies relevant to governance in the 21stCentury will be examined. Forward-looking modules will explore, as advance projections anchored in contemporary developments, how artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and so-called ‘surveillance capitalism’, a term coined by Shoshana Zubof, will impact citizenry and citizenship in the decades to come.
The Foundation’s lectures were mainstreamed into the course in order to more clearly highlight how inextricably entwined social media already is in government and governance. As in 2017 and again in 2018, Sanjana Hattotuwa’s lectures covered a number of areas dealing with,
- Social media: What is the digital media landscape today and why does it matter for governance
- Big Data, Open Data & Open Source Intelligence (OS-INT): How can it all aid policymaking?
- Navigating a post-factual world: ‘Fake news’ phenomenon and vectors and basics of social media verification
- The future: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on public discourse
The presentation on artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications on governance, government as well as ethics built on the lecture last year and captured contemporary concerns, challenges as well as opportunities around shallow and deep fakes, image and audio manipulation, face detection, algorithmic advances and related issues.
Questions from the participants throughout the day ranged from specific technical concerns and contextual challenges to more broadly, the role and reach of governance, accountability of social media companies in the toxicity they promote over platforms, the need for oversight, redress, specific opportunities for the use of public data in creating stronger governance mechanisms as well as – in comparison to previous years – a stronger and more focussed conversation on (data) ethics and rights.
The Foundation’s lectures as part of this course reflects a long-standing engagement with ETH over a variety of issues, from big data as far back as 2013 to more recently, presentations and discussions around lethal autonomous weapons systems and ethics of AI.