For the second consecutive year, ICT4Peace’s Sanjana Hattotuwa and Daniel Stauffacher were 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. The course brings participants from over 20 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.
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, 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?
- New and neo-cartography: The world of web-based mapping & implications for citizen participation in Early Warning, Disaster Risk Reduction, Humanitarian and Complex Political Emergencies
- Navigating a post-factual world: ‘Fake news’ phenomenon and vectors, and introduction to social media verification
- The future: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on public discourse
Questions from the participants ranged from specific technical concerns and contextual challenges to more broadly, the role, relevance and reach of AI, machine learning and algorithmic bias in social media, how to combat misinformation, the challenges of dealing with fake news whilst balancing rights, including the freedom of expression, privacy and related areas.
Sanjana’s presentation on artificial intelligence, which included examples around deep fakes, image and audio manipulation, face detection, algorithmic advances, the nexus between AI and governance and implications for rights, ethics and democracy was new this year, reflecting concerns and developments over the past year alone in this area.
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.