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Using Blockchain for Immutable Mediation and Autonomous Governance

01.15.20

Introduction Blockchain is the decentralized system that underpins cryptocurrencies. It offers a secure and impartial platform that can store vast amounts of transactional data for any asset that can be digitized. It cannot be manipulated or hacked due to its complex security features and the legacy of transactions that promote continuity, much like real objects […]

State Influence and Technical Standards

12.31.19

“If you control an industry’s standards, you control that industry lock, stock and ledger.”[1] What Are Standards? Before the now-ubiquitous USB drive existed, computers used serial and parallel ports to transfer data from devices like keyboards, mice, and printers. To address this inefficiency, the USB was invented in 1994 by Ajay Bhatt of Intel and […]

Reprogramming the Patriarchy: Combatting Gender Bias in Machine Learning

08.23.19

  The media narrative on artificial intelligence (AI) is not far removed from the plot of a science-fiction movie: robots will one day become smarter than the humans who created them, leading to cataclysmic events we cannot control. While this scenario depicts the risks that AI may pose in the future, a more immediate threat […]

#PepperDemMinistries: A Digital Afrocentric Approach to Feminism

08.22.19

  In early Fall 2017, the husband of Ghanaian entertainer Afia Schwarzenegger uploaded videos of what appeared to be Schwarzenegger engaging in an extramarital affair. Ghana’s digital publics swiftly demonized her. That September, several women used the hashtag #MenAreTheirOwnEnemies to expose the misogyny pervading media coverage of the Schwarzenegger affair. Regardless of the facts of […]

The Unveiling of the Librazone : Are the Similarities Between Libra and the Eurozone a Coincidence?

07.24.19

BY AMELIA POLLARD After a decade of amassing influence, Facebook has unveiled another way to remain a financial heavyweight not only for digital markets, but for society. On June 18, Mark Zuckerberg announced the birth of a new form of blockchain-backed cryptocurrency dubbed “Libra”—a potential monetary revolution that’s raised eyebrows, particularly in the wake of […]

Building a Policy Agenda for the Future of Work

06.26.19

BY JENNIFER LEIGH GUSTETIC AND CARLOS TEXIERA Fear of increased automation in work has undoubtedly caught the public interest. From international organizations to multinational corporations and TV shows, there have been numerous attempts to predict the impacts that automation will have on the economy – especially within labor markets. Analysing the Future of Work is, […]

What Sierra Leone’s Renaissance Teaches Us About the New 21st Century State

04.22.19

A new administration is at the vanguard of African leadership, prioritizing national development in a new model of partnership and possibility BY JENNIFER KAMARA Sierra Leone has adopted a new strategy that is reforming its troubled past, piece by piece. Less than a year into his term, President Julius Maada Bio is leading his country […]

Lessons for the US from Austalia’s #censusfail

04.18.19

BY ISABELLA BORSHOFF Most statisticians will only ever light up the Twittersphere in their wildest dreams. But for census staff at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), those dreams became a nightmarish reality as the country’s first digital census bombed spectacularly, earning its own hashtag, #censusfail. Every five years, Australians sit down on a designated […]

Latin American Cities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Potential and Social Risks of Smart-Cities Technologies, by Beatriz Botero Arcila

04.17.19

This article appears in the Spring 2019 edition of the Latin America Policy Journal released in April 2019. You can order the edition here.   Abstract In the wake of the implementation of smart-city technologies in Latin American cities, this article reviews both their potential for making municipal administration and local service delivery more efficient and […]

A Fairer Playing Field in the New Economy: Creating New Rules for 21st-Century Corporate Might

07.16.18

BY MATTHEW E. SPECTOR The first year of the Trump administration coincided with dizzying shifts in American commercial institutions. Consolidation of consumer-facing businesses from AT&T and Aetna to Amazon and Disney brought new and increasingly pressing attention to market power—the consolidation of a well-defined market among a few firms, yielding anticompetitive prices that reduce consumer […]

Imagining a Killer Robot’s First Words: Engineering State-in-the-Loop Legal Responsibility for Fully Autonomous Weapons Systems

07.12.18

BY JESSICA “ZHANNA” MALEKOS SMITH As the U.S., the U.K., Russia, China, South Korea, and Israel begin developing fully autonomous weapons (FAW) systems, the issue of state responsibility for such systems remains undeveloped. In fact, the term “state responsibility” did not even appear in the United Nation’s Group of Governmental Experts Chair’s summary of the […]

How Machines Think, and Why It Matters

06.11.18

BY BRENDAN ROACH In 1950, British mathematician Alan Turing took to the pages of the philosophical journal Mind to pose a question that has flummoxed philosophers and scientists ever since: can machines think?[1] At the time of writing, the question was almost preposterously optimistic: the world’s first computer, the ENIAC, was barely five years old […]

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