Digital Policy

Astro Hsu investigates how financial regulators for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) may balance between privacy protection and law enforcement efficacy. “Zero-knowledge proof” is a promising approach.

Katharina Klappheck examines AI’s intricate layers of power dynamics that leads to gender and racial invisibility, exclusion, and labour exploitation.

Aifric Campbell explores the future of love and intimacy as our attention to humans is seduced by machines.

This essay collection presents how rapid developments in human-machine interactions bring challenges in ethics, labour, gender equality, and intimacy.

AI chatbots introduce ethical issues that complicate social communication. This article discusses environmental impacts, fair use, and limits of language.

In Japan, despite the hiking single elderly population, there is a chronic shortage of caregivers for home visit. As many single seniors struggle to find a conversation partner, what about interacting with a robot instead of a human? Recently, the United States introduced communication robots to minimise medical costs incurred from the elderly’s social isolation. What can the world learn from Japan?

At the end of March 2022, Shanghai was plunged into surreal silence, and scarcity. The country’s strictest Covid-19 pandemic lockdown lasted for two months. Never, since decades, had the people minded their three meals that much, to the extent of becoming the only thing they cared about. In their struggles for self-sufficiency and survival, group buying came to rescue. Did dwellers find a new sense of community or were they more fragmented?

Change is all around us; experiencing it can be exciting or worrisome, confusing or even disturbing. By contrast, the idea of “transition” stands to provide a sense of direction, in a sea of change and insecurity. Change may be happening to us; a transition has direction, it can be planned, perhaps even be initiated. It moves into a positive, sustainable direction – or so we hope. The equivalent German term “Wende” and its numerous composite terms play a prominent role in the programme of the German Green and in the international work of Heinrich Böll Stiftung (hbs).

Policy makers tend to push for “precision” digital technologies, in particular robots, drones and sensors, to address the challenges in biodiversity, the environment and even climate change. The dangerous drawback is, by minimizing human judgment, traditional knowledge and lived experiences, these technology systems tend to undermine people’s ability to nurture ecosystems.

On June 15, a webinar held jointly by the Hong Kong office of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS) and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a consortium of leading research universities in 19 economies of the Pacific Rim, highlighted the complexity of data rights for citizens and users, with risks deriving from both under-regulation and over-regulation of AI applications.

The ETC group reviews the process of technology assessment (TA) – an inclusive corrective to policymaking on new and emerging technologies. It involves people’s informed views on long-term common good, to replace top-down and opaque decision-making processes by power players.

Sagari Ramdas shows how agribusiness use big tech and big data to fulfil their ‘sustainability goals’ from indigenous Adivasi farmers of Andhra Pradesh, India. It turns out to be a case of exploitation in the name of sustainability.

How do we preserve our humanity in a world of intelligent machines? AI researcher Mark Nitzberg on the need to build AI models that are safe for humans and make explainable decisions – and why standards and oversight are key.  Our fellow Ekaterina Venkina interviewed the Executive Director at the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley (CHAI) for RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).

A range of new and disruptive technologies threatens potentially irreversible damage to our planet. The ETC Group discusses technologies and the imagined futures that underpin them.

The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act aims to regulate emerging applications of AI in accordance with “EU values”. But for the most concerning of all such potential applications, the line between regulation and prohibition can be a tricky one to draw.

25 November is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The hbs has interviewed Jacey Kan from Hong Kong’s Association Concerning Sexual Violence Against Women (ACSVAW) to introduce its campaign in fighting against image-based sexual violence.

Technology is gendered. It may be treated as neutral, but its application and support through government policy impact gendered identities, needs and priorities. South Korea’s pandemic response and post-pandemic strategy have inadvertently reversed the nation’s progress in promoting gender equality. This article reviews two gendered experiences of the digital transformation precipitated by Covid-19. It points out the absence of gender inclusion in the national policy advocating digital transformation, and the resulting marginalisation of women. 

The pandemic accelerated and changed many social impact communities across the globe. Social impact encompasses the impact everyone of us creates, whether positive or negative - all these activities create an impact on the environment and people as well as the world around us...