The 3L Mantra to live by!

Was fantastic to go back to Hong Kong after more than a decade! I gave a keynote at the Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAT) Asia forum organized by Digital Asia Hub , a new and dynamic center on technology innovation and impact in the Asian region. This is the Asian version of the multi-disciplinary conference that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems. It is led by Malavika Jayaram , the executive director of this hub and a brilliant legal mind on technology rights, ethics and responsibility. The theme for this conference goes beyond the futuristic enthusiasm for gadgets to more on responsibility with these new technologies. Their call explains how "...there is growing concern about the implications of an algorithm-driven society. Scholars and thinkers are debating the potential impact of automated decision-making on equality, autonomy, and dignity, and addressing...

I have been invited to be on the new advisory committee by Facebook to help scholars independently assess Facebook’s impact on elections, misinformation, privacy and other contemporary and critical issues regarding its usage.   In April, Facebook announced it would be working with a group of academics to establish an independent research commission to look into issues of social and political significance using the company’s own extensive data collection. That commission, called Social Science One has just launched in early July.  I will be on the Asian regional committee and partake in collaborations to assess the impact of Facebook in this region. In the last two years, Facebook tools have not just helped politicians connect with their constituents — and different communities to debate the issues but as we have witnessed, it can be misused to manipulate and deceive.  To keep this independent, it will be funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Democra...

I like the Economist magazine...its not afraid of having a strong opinion. Not that I readily agree with their arguments but no one can accuse them of not taking a stand. For instance, they write about Al Jazeera ( http://english.aljazeera.net/ ), one of the supposedly few independent media networks in the Gulf States as a natural unifier in a region that is seen as much fragmented. It is a fascinating argument of how a media network scales itself across the world now, by creating a sense of unity and identity through its rhetoric of shared Middle East concerns. Of course, the problem here is that the Economist, when it talks of the "fragmented Arab nations" implicitly reinforces such stereotypes of this region in a constant state of flux. Even though we all know that the State is not necessarily a representative of its people, we see this constantly at play when we talk of nations. Middle eastern leaders of States may not be able to work together or be united in a cause perh...