There were recommendations and suggestions from this conference to establish alliances to protect and strengthen democracy to face threats that undermine democracy and threats from China. In July, there were statements and speeches of leaders echoing these recommendations and sentiments.
Ichiro Fujisaki, former Ambassador of Japan to US, a distinguished professor and Chairman for International Strategies of Sophia University, spoke at the Democratic Alliance on Digital Governance Conference in July 2020.
He criticized China’s autocracy and he raised the 3Cs to protect and strengthen democracy: Coherence in thinking, Consistent actions, Collaboration among democracy countries.
Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki is also a Mentor of AI World Society Innovation Network (AIWS.net).
Current machine learning platforms largely fail to provide time-series predictions because “correlations that have held in the past may simply not continue to hold in the future,” the London-based company causalLens notes. That’s a particular problem in areas like finance and business where time-series data types are ubiquitous.
Those correlations tend to be single data points, unsuited to capturing context or complex relationships. In one example, an algorithm can be given access to a data set about dairy commodity prices to predict the price of cheese. The algorithm may conclude that butter prices as a guide to predicting the cost of limburger.
Eluding the algorithm is a fundamental assumption about the cost of dairy products: the hidden common cause of price spikes for cheese and butter is the cost of milk. Therefore, a sudden change in the price of butter—consumers’ preference for olive oil, for instance—is unrelated to milk prices. Hence, the faulty correlation between butter and cheese can’t be used to predict the latter’s price.
The company touts its “causal AI” framework as looking beyond correlations to learn obvious relationships and then “propose plausible hypotheses about more obscure chains of causality,” it noted in a recent research bulletin. The approach allows data scientists to add domain knowledge and real-world context to improve predictive analytics. Causal AI proponents also argue their approach makes better use of data to come up with more accurate predictions through the framework’s ability to simulate different scenarios.
It is useful to note that AI and causal inference has been contributed by professor Judea Pearl, who was awarded Turing Award in 2011. In 2020, Professor Pearl is also awarded as World Leader in AI World Society (AIWS.net) by Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) and Boston Global Forum (BGF).
The government does not think it necessary to declare a state of emergency over the novel coronavirus again, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said, despite a nationwide surge in the number of cases.
“We’re doing careful monitoring with a strong sense of tension, but we’re not in a situation that immediately warrants the issuance of a fresh state of emergency declaration,” Abe told reporters.
We ask the public to take full precautions” against COVID-19, he said after a meeting on the situation with economic revitalization minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, health minister Katsunobu Kato and others.
Referring to the conditions that could help spread the virus, Abe said, “We ask people to avoid the 3Cs and to refrain from speaking loudly.” The 3Cs refer to confined spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings.
He also said virus testing capacity has not maxed out yet despite a recent surge of testers, and vowed to engage further in the early detection of infected people and treatment.
Boston Global Forum honored Prime Minister Abe with the World Leader for Peace and Security Award on Global Cybersecurity Day December 12, 2020 at Harvard University Faculty Club.
In preparation for the Policy Lab, WLA-CdM and BGF will be organizing a series of preliminary online roundtables that seek to fuel and enrich deliberations within the Policy Lab. The first of these roundtables took place on 12 May, 2020, and focused on the deployment of digital technologies in response to COVID-19 pandemic, and their implications on privacy rights.
A second online roundtable on Digital Technologies, Elections and Democracy in times of the COVID-19 pandemic will be held on 28 July 2020 and analyse how digital technologies can contribute to protecting democracies and guaranteeing free, fair and transparent elections in times of global emergencies.
Objective of this event:
To contribute to the global discussions on how digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence can promote stable democracies in times of global crises.
To collect ideas for the Social Contract 2020 version 1.0 launched on May 2020.
Due to social distancing measures, we have decided to organize a virtual conference instead. The key content of this conference is “The Social Contract 2020: A New Social Contract in the Age of AI”
There are 20 former presidents and prime ministers that will join together with distinguished thinkers, legislators, and business leaders.
The magnitude and relevance of the COVID-19 pandemic has, naturally, upended original plans for Policy Lab on Transatlantic Approaches to Digital Governance: A New Social Contract in the Age of Artificial Intelligence which was originally designed to take place in the Spring of 2020. However, this initiative is now more important than ever as we seek to engage in multi-stakeholder discussions on the interaction between artificial intelligence/emerging technologies and measures/policies adopted by governments, international organizations, companies and society in times of global crises such as the one spawned by COVID 19.
The spread and penetration of digital technologies has been transforming society, the way in which we work, communicate and participate in different public and private spaces for some time now. The COVID-19 outbreak and ensuing global health crisis has significantly accelerated this process, imposing rapid and widespread digitalization even in the political sphere.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen online party meetings and even parliamentary sessions conducted via videoconference. We have also been able to verify the complexity of adapting certain governance interaction to a virtual format due to internal public administration rules and regulations Likewise, we have seen an increased interest in moving even voting online with a clear consciousness and concern over the opportunities and risks that this would entail in the context of elections.
