Home | Newsletters & Shorts | DW Weekly #162 – 31 May 2024

DW Weekly #162 – 31 May 2024

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Dear readers, 

Welcome to another issue of the Digital Watch weekly! 

How much is too much? Everything in moderation, the saying goes, and Indonesians surely have it on their minds these days. The country is grappling with a huge excess of government digital public service apps, as new applications were made with each change in leadership. This is bound to cause confusion among citizens and drain resources from the ministries and regional administrations that operate the apps. The proposed solution? A hard stop on making apps and green light on integrating them – all 27,000 of them – into one platform, the INA Digital platform. Obviously, this will be a huge undertaking. Working on it are 400 local digital talents under GovTech Indonesia. By September, the platform would integrate services from at least 15 ministries. One of the drawbacks is, as is the case with any centralised system, that cybersecurity might become an issue: Data will still be stored by individual ministries, yet will need to safeguard this data with shared protocols.

Drawing of a person reaching out for help from beneath a mountain of apps. The pile of apps has a sinister shadow.

Things are moving along in the TikTok vs USA case: The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has agreed to speed up the review of the ‘TikTok ban law’ that mandates that ByteDance divest TikTok’s US assets. Oral arguments are to be presented in September. However, reports suggest that TikTok is developing a new recommendation algorithm for its US-based users, separate from its current recommendation algorithm, which might pave the way for the divestiture. Historically speaking, no remedies TikTok or ByteDance have made have managed to reassure the USA that the companies are not beholden to China. Will this be enough?

This week, Geneva hosted WSIS+20 and AI for Good Global Summit 2024. Discussions are almost finished at WSIS – even as we’re sending this email, ITU’s Secretary General Doreen Bogdan-Martin is delivering closing remarks. Just a few more hours are left of the AI for Good programme. One of the most exciting points of the discussions was Sam Altman’s interview, where he touched upon OpenAI’s alleged use of Scarlett Johansson’s voice likeness in its AI model, ChatGPT. Altman claimed the company didn’t intend to make the voice sound like Johansson. 

And speaking of ChatGPT, a survey has revealed that up to 30% of the population has no knowledge of generative AI tools and their implications.

In other news this week, the EU established its AI Office, which is set to play a key role in the implementation of the AI Act. International law enforcement agencies took down 911 S5, the biggest botnet ever, Zambia joined the list of countries with national AI strategies, and more.

Andrijana and the Digital Watch team


Highlights from the week of 24-31 May 2024

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By integrating public services into the INA Digital platform, the Indonesian government hopes to achieve cost savings and enhance service delivery.

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The AI Office is structured into different units, each with specific responsibilities. Led by the Head of the AI Office and advised by a Lead Scientific Adviser and an international…

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The research shows that 20-30% of respondents in six countries have not heard of ChatGPT or other popular AI tools.

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The Zambian ministry is also actively training its workforce in AI, indicating a commitment to building the necessary human capital to fully leverage AI technologies.

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The companies have sought the European Commission’s input on their new AI products, particularly those in the large language model space.

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National privacy watchdogs have raised concerns about the widely used AI service, leading to ongoing investigations.

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Chinese chip shares have seen an increase lately as seventeen investors, including five major Chinese banks, contributed to the fund, each adding around 6% to the total capital.

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The bill received significant support in Congress due to concerns among lawmakers about Chinese access to Americans’ data and potential espionage through the app.

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TikTok and ByteDance have filed a lawsuit in US federal court to challenge the law forcing a sale or ban of the app.

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The net-zero industry act is one of the three key legislative initiatives of the Green Deal Industrial Plan.

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Musicians are increasingly concerned about the misuse of their identities in AI-generated content.

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The arrest was part of a multiagency operation involving law enforcement from the US, Singapore, Thailand, and Germany.

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The operation was conducted across Europe and North Asia by Europol and its partners. Four individuals were arrested.

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The discussion highlighted key challenges such as limited CSO involvement in digital policy, financial barriers, and overrepresentation of Global North organisations. The CADE project aims to address these by offering tailored training to CSOs to enhance their internet governance skills and foster constructive dialogue with policymakers.



ICYMI

Flags help us uncover the basics of AI. Watch the video to find out what they teach us about pattern recognition and probability.


Check out our dedicated WSIS+20 and AI for Good Global Summit 2024 webpages for reports from selected sessions. 

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The WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event, part of the World Summit on the Information Society process, was held 27–31 May. The meetings reviewed progress related to information and knowledge societies, shared best practices, and built partnerships.

Global Summit 2024

The AI for Good Global Summit was held 30–31 May, in Geneva, Switzerland. This event, part of the AI for Good platform, focused on identifying practical AI applications to advance the SDGs globally.


Reading corner

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Continuing the three-part series on AI’s influence on intellectual property (IP), this final section touches upon the approaches applied to safeguard IP in the AI Age.

Biscott
www.diplomacy.edu

Bi Scott’s first blog post, ‘Speaking of Futures (1): Story-capsules’, she looked at how story-capsules found in connotations and metaphors can subliminally influence the way we think about the future. This week, Scott looks at the framing devices in broader narratives about AI, from science fiction and cautionary tales to logical fallacies.

Chhath Puja
www.diplomacy.edu

In 2015, Aldo Matteucci commented on the ambitious plan for a big data-driven encyclopedia of religious cultural history, highlighting issues with Western biases and the difficulty of quantifying religious experiences.