Helen Toner

The senate AI working group released their long awaited framework for AI legislation. Matching AI’s broad-based impact, this is an incredibly broad package. Overall this is decent, however the many positives are paired with a few concerning lows. Here's some highlight on what's inside: On the upside there is a clear emphasis on promoting innovation and diffusion including: 1. Talent development through possible upskilling incentives, federal talent development programs and fellowships, and security clearance fast tracking. 2. State capacity building through funding for IT modernization, public private partnerships to tackle key issues, and possible new voluntary survey to study AI economic impact and key issues. 3. Regulatory clarity though a regulatory gap analysis in the financial sector and a report from the comptroller general on “any significant federal statutes and regulations that affect the innovation of artificial intelligence systems, including the ability of companies of all sizes to compete in artificial intelligence.” On the downside we find: 1. Export controls: supporting the recently introduced ENFORCE Act, the Senate is considering AI export control authorities. It’s unclear what problem controls could solve, but almost certainly would create needless challenges for software and AI companies alike. 2. Possible pre-deployment certification: while non-committal the framework also opens the door to requirements for possible govenrment review of certain models. What this might look like, and how serious the senators are is unclear. That said, such testing is largely to be avoided. 3. Restricted Data: A dose of AI apocalysm with possible classification rules modeled on the Atomic Energy Act’s restricted data regime. This worryingly conflates AI and atomic materials. Restricted data classifies information upon existence. Absolutely discouraged. On top of these we also find a smattering of largely disconnected issues including online child safety, outer space security, and addressing the opioid crisis. As a general rule, any legislation should focus on the task at hand: AI. Lets avoid making any AI leg a congressional catch-all. All of this considered, I’m optimistic. The vast majority is productive or benign and provisions such as the CREATE AI Act’s research support are where we find the most support. That said, senators must avoid harmful restrictions and controls without empirical evidence of real problems. https://lnkd.in/eN6vqUGJ

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🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇 I'm really excited to launch the Back to Viz Basics: Flourish Edition project! Following #B2VB, we'll make graphs in Flourish and make better, interactive, and responsive graphs, charts, cards, and much more! Every other week, Eric Balash & team post a dataset for us to explore and work with. To date, it's mostly been Tableau folks participating, but I think it's valuable to try other tools. Follow along as we create graphs in Flourish and, together, we learn how to make great graphs and charts. All the details you need are right here: https://lnkd.in/efHKMiJq

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In honor of Earth Day, I wrote a new piece for Terra.do on rethinking our approach to climate messaging, drawing on lessons learned from a career in political campaigns and environmental advocacy as well as my contributions to a groundbreaking new climate communications report. Here's a snip. Check out the full piece below! "Last year, more than sixty contributors and organizations came together to publish A New Era in Climate Communications. This collaborative paper, an initiative of the non-profit New Zero World, proposed a shift in how we think and communicate about the climate crisis. I was one of the contributors and added my thoughts to four sections of the paper which pull from my 15 years’ experience in U.S. political campaigning, public policy process, the NGO / non-profit sector, and global environmental issue advocacy. Since the launch of A New Era during last year’s NYC Climate Week, the digital knowledge hub has attracted over 80,000 impressions from a global audience spanning 85+ countries. The paper has been presented at the COP28 UN climate conference, the Cannes Lions Festival, and other global events. A new effort was also launched alongside the paper called the Earth Public Information Collaborative (EPIC) “a global media and communications coalition to support direct public engagement in tackling the planetary emergency...[continued]” #EarthDay #EarthDay2024 #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCommunications https://lnkd.in/gDUWjDdF

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This is a fascinating interview with Cecilia Muñoz, Obama's Domestic Policy Council Director. It is part of the Institute for Progress (IFP)'s excellent "Statecraft" series that speaks to policymakers about how to get stuff done: https://lnkd.in/gGUyxPvU It is the PhD in political and diplomatic history side of me, but I'm endlessly fascinated by the big 'P' and small 'p' politics of how decisions get made and how power gets used. How does knowledge flow to decision-makers? How do you advance priorities when forced to respond to emergent issues? How do you build alliances to make change happen even when, especially when, issues are complex and there are disagreements on the best course of action? This interview gives insights into all of that from someone at the sharpest end of decision-making. Worth a read!

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Strongly recommend registering for this free webinar on Thursday 16th May at 12pm GMT Social Sync and GoFundMe will show how to unlock new fundraising channels that are proven to drive revenue growth and ensure a smooth donor journey. With Meta's recent removal of Facebook fundraising tools in the European Economic Area (EEA), it's become clear to charities that now is the time to invest in supporter journeys outside of the traditional channels for a more robust and modern fundraising experience. Learn more about your opportunities to incorporate existing fundraising tools such as branded pages and prepare for a new era in fundraising! If you'd like to chat before, feel free to reach out... #Charities #Charity #socialfundraising #facebookfundraising #techforgood #fundraising #innovation #nonprofit

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Truly excellent paper by Josh Lerner that summarises the many waves of #democratic #innovations and suggests that the way forward needs to be about #systemic and integrated changes. Avoiding parochialism and building on the different strengths of the solutions currently available (#electoral, #direct, #participatory, and #deliberative systems) is the key to reform and reinforce our #democracy. Glad that our own Tim Hughes contributed to it! Gillian Dorner, Carlos Santiso, Joanne Caddy, David Goessmann, Mauricio Mejia, Dominik Hierlemann, Anthony Zacharzewski, Raphael Pouyé

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I've spent a big chunk of the last six months talking to many people in the progressive tech ecosystem for this report, which looks at how core political organizing technology ended up in the hands of a private overseas equity fund, what this means for 2024, and what lessons we can learn for the future of movement tech. This is a link to an abridged version; the full 11,000-word study is on my website. Please dive in!

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In my latest #KnowingwithoutSeeing essay written as part of the recently concluded fellowship with Mozilla, I look at the central role games, most notably chess, played in the computing cultures around AI, as benchmarks for measuring intelligence. Programmers have been trying to teach computers to play chess since the beginning of computer science. Hector Levesque goes one step ahead and claims that “as soon as a machine is invented, the next step is to turn it into a chess player.” This broad acceptance of chess as a complex, analytical and creative game gave it an elite status in computing cultures so much so that in 1973, Simon and Chase declared that “if one could devise a successful chess machine, one would seem to have penetrated to the core of human intellectual endeavour.” It had helped that many notable computer science pioneers like Turing and Shannon were amateur chess players.  I look at the competing approaches to chess-playing algorithms, which haven't changed much in the last seventy years, and how the performance of machines in playing chess, and to a lesser extent games like Go have been an important part of the popular discourse around AI, often also used to deflect criticisms of the efficacy of AI systems. The public spectacle that chess matches provided also made them indispensable for a field which has relied for over six decades on hype and potential rather than real-life performance. To cut the clutter around the hype that dominates conversations about AI, I provide an account of the various tests of machine intelligence from the Turing Test to the Winograd Schema Challenge, how they work and the trickery sometimes used to perform well on them. While state-of-the-art AI in domains such as speech recognition have improved dramatically in the last decade, they continue to be confused or misled by unfamiliar words or phrases, thus underscoring their limited comprehension of the speech they are transcribing, which is a feature of sub-symbolic AI. The current approach to improving the performance of AI is largely about adding more layers of networks and more data. In my essay, I question if sub-symbolic AI has a natural ceiling which will be hit well before any semblance of AGI, as its flaws are a clear and unremovable symptom of a programming system which accomplishes tasks without understanding what they are. #AI #NLP #Chess #TuringTest #WinogradSchema

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So many books, new and old, with lessons on the potential implications of AI. And so little time……... Happily, my colleague Nicholas Swanson has written a short review of David Runciman’s book, the Handover, with thoughts on what it means in the current AI policy context.  Short extract: "What would it mean for leviathan if increasing proportions of economic activity took the form of inference compute - potentially imported? And what is the right scale or organising principle for decision-making when the production of power is less rooted in territory?" Please take a look, and subscribe to our AI Policy Perspectives Substack, for more such musings……. #AI, #AIPolicy, #Reading

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Looking for evidence-based insights to elevate your projects? Dive into the world of GRAAM's mixed methods and community-focused research services! At GRAAM, we believe in the power of data and community engagement to drive impactful change. Our comprehensive research services combine quantitative and qualitative methods to provide you with a holistic understanding of your project's impact and potential. Why Choose GRAAM? - Community-Centric Approach - Mixed Methods - Evidence-Based Insights - Innovative Solutions Ready to harness the power of evidence-based research? Connect with us and discover how GRAAM's expertise can transform your project into a catalyst for positive change. #GRAAM #ResearchServices #CommunityEngagement #MixedMethods #EvidenceBased #SustainableDevelopment #ImpactfulChange #DataDriven #PolicyResearch #SocialImpact #CommunityFocused #Empowerment #TransformativeSolutions #PublicPolicy #NGO #DevelopmentInitiatives #GrassrootsMovements

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Check out this blog post written by a friend and former colleague Wil Watkins. He gives his recommendations on “how leaders can safeguard democracy, advance women’s rights and political leadership, and strengthen workers’ rights during this pivotal year.” Check it out!

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Check out the latest post on sustainable health financing at USAID’s Learning Lab! (See the link below the big empty space 😆)

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Read our co-founder and Chair, Jeff Lynn in UKTN on our Startup Manifesto. In it he talks about why it's crucial we don't take the success of the startup ecosystem for granted. It faces challenges - but while the temptation might be to change direction and seek new solutions - in the case of the ecosystem, consistency and commitment are key. "The foundations we've laid as a country - supportive policies, investment in innovation, and a focus on emerging technologies - have proven effective. Now is the time to build upon these foundations, not to uproot them...The future of our economy is inextricably linked to the success of our startups. In times like these it would be easy for a Government to focus entirely on what's going wrong. But in freeing up what's already going right to run faster, we can drive growth, create new jobs and secure our future at the forefront of today's and tomorrow’s economy." When it comes to startups, the next government must resist the urge to reinvent the wheel: https://lnkd.in/eVVbMPsS Agree? Read and sign Startup Coalition's Startup Manifesto here: https://lnkd.in/eEtT4iDV #startups #scaleups #tech

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Today marks an exciting milestone as the Nature Collective Impact Coalition (CIC) World Benchmarking Alliance are convening along with co-leads Business for Nature and Emerging Markets Investors Alliance (EMIA) publishes its first Call to Action. As governments gather in Nairobi next week for the fourth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (UN Biodiversity), the Nature CIC urges all large and transnational companies to assess and disclose their nature-related risks, impacts and dependencies.   SBI 4 represents a key moment on the path to COP16 and the achievement of the 2030 targets and the 2050 goals for the Biodiversity Plan (formerly the Global Biodiversity Framework). Target 15 of the Biodiversity Plan makes it clear that we cannot halt and reverse biodiversity loss without business action.   We believe this is a key first step for the private sector to understand their relationship with nature, and to know how and where to take action to reduce harmful impacts and increase positive ones. Therefore, the Nature Collective Impact Coalition (CIC) calls on companies to use the frameworks, tools and resources available to them and take action for nature now.   You can find out more about the Nature CIC here: https://bit.ly/nature-CIC and if you are interested in joining, please reach out! COMGEST, Rathbones Group Plc, Ethos Foundation (Switzerland), Scottish Widows, Vancity, Business for Nature, The B Team, B Lab, Climateworks Centre, Emerging Markets Investors Alliance (EMIA), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), OmniAction, Planet Tracker, ShareAction, Wildlife Habitat Council, WWF, Zoological Society of London (ZSL) #NatureCIC #naturepositive #SBI4   https://lnkd.in/ex7BM9qm

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At Plural we believe that everyone should have access to powerful civic and policy engagement tools. That's why we offer free versions of all of software, including our free legislative tracker. Since 2021, millions of individuals across the U.S. have leveraged Plural to engage in the policymaking process. Here are some highlights: -Bills (legislation) viewed and read: over 5.4 MILLION! -API calls to our free API: over 138 MILLION! -Elected Officials Searched: Over 2.2 MILLION! Here's more about the importance of open data for democracy and our commitment to policy technology innovation. https://lnkd.in/eanUw7Mh

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Can I nerd out a bit? Not exactly the best thing to say at a cocktail party but hopefully I'm safe among the LI universe. As part of the Climatebase Fellowship in which I'm participating right now, I heard from Neil Yeoh at OnePointFive (opf.degree) during a great session on Engineered Carbon Removal. It was all about natural and man-made ways to reduce CO2 emissions to get the world closer to net zero. Some of it is pretty technical so let's talk about a cool game that Neil showed us on what it looks like to achieve 10 gigatons (billion tons) of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2050. That's the amount we would need to meet the Paris Agreement. The game/model is called "The Road to Ten Gigatons" (https://lnkd.in/gxh2GN2D) and was developed by students from Harvard, MIT and UPenn. The goal is to help people understand what it actually means to scale up different carbon removal solutions to gigaton scale by tracking their effects along a number of quantitative and more qualitative dimensions. It's sort of a sensitivity analysis game that reminds me a bit of the old Oregon Trail game when I was a kid. Although the implications of these types of decisions would be much worse than getting dysentery (which is pretty bad, I imagine). You can choose among a variety of options to reach the 10 gigaton goal by moving sliders. As you move the sliders, you not only see the total CO2 number but also the impact on cost, land use, energy used and energy produced. There are also both good and bad consequences that pop up as you adjust your mix of solutions and the permanence that your solution would provide. While you can "win" and achieve 10 Gigatons, it comes at a cost. The game only took a few minutes to play and test out. I don't want to steal the game's thunder but the headline takeaway is that our collective actions to address the challenge will involve tradeoffs and a portfolio of solutions. If anything, it gives players a sense of the scale and related nature of the levers we are considering. #engineeredcarbonremoval #climatesolutions #climatebase #climateinnovation

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What is a Startup Ecosystem anyway? Glad you asked. I've conveniently published this blog post to answer your question: https://lnkd.in/edaJZmZ8 Startups do not succeed in a vacuum. The community around them made up of a myriad of actors have a role to play in the ultimate ability of startups to survive, scale and thrive. Understanding who these players are and how they interact with startups is key when trying to assess the current situation at play and in deciding how to better assist startups and their founders succeed. Give it a read, let me know your thoughts. #startups #startupecosystem #entrepreneurship

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New podcast from Katie Harbath & Anchor Change on elections coalitions, which folks like Mevan Babakar have supported thought the Google News Initiative. Key insights from Claire Wardle, PhD and Daniel Bramatti: "I think there are incredible fact checkers around the world, but the challenge is the idea that you're doing the work, but also building an audience. And so often there's really good work happening, but not all fact checkers have a huge audience ... we had 24 newsrooms all talking about the same thing with the same tip line. I mean, I think that again gets forgotten in what it meant to build a new brand off the back of all these news organizations that were okay sharing a new brand. So I think there was a lot of learnings there about how we managed to get traction in a very, very short period of time." "We are in a good position because we have to build that trust relations with the public ... we have to show that we have a method to separate what's fact and what's not fact. And this is a good opportunity for us. By entering this battle, you can show that you are not there to spread content only for clicks. You are there to show the truth or to search for the truth." Give it a listen!!! And download the report! https://lnkd.in/evwVs8C8 https://lnkd.in/efPUqY93

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Our new article “Advancing the climate change and health nexus: The 2024 Agenda" is out in the PLOS Global Public Health journal. To halt the damaging impacts of climate change, which are not only affecting our health but also stalling progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, we must: 1. Make a full shift to renewable energy 2. Build resilient health systems and fund them impactfully, aligned behind strong national plans 3. Push for more flexible, accessible, and accelerated financing from wealthier governments and philanthropies to unlock our ability to address the negative health impacts of climate change A health-centered climate response focusing on building resilient health systems will save millions of lives, strengthen every country’s economy, and promote human health and well-being. Read the full article here 👇

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