Newsletter from the Center for Digital Welfare - August 2024
Welcome to the August Newsletter...!
As the world gears back into the grind of office life, our researchers are busy planning courses, picking syllabus readings, getting the last summer writing in before the big student return, and of course, making plans for the coming half year.

With this newsletter you can get a peek into those plans - and sign up for the activities that excite you!

We look forward to meeting up with you.

Sincerely,
Laura & The Management Team, Cancan, Louise, Sisse and Irina

 
Events Coming Up!

On August 15th, we’re kicking off the semester with a lively full-day Forum on Digitalizing Emergency Communication organized by Sunniva Sandbukt on behalf of the Center and the research project DIGeMERGE. The full-day program consists of keynotes and discussion panels at ITU during the day, and dinner at the nearby hotel Zoku in the evening. See the detailed program in the link above.

On August 20, 09:30-12:00 CDW is inviting all members for an expedition to KCX – an innovation and rehabilitation lab at Kommunikationscenteret in Ballerup. Here, participants will learn more about welfare and “smart home” technology for people with disabilites, and discuss the social organization and (re-)structuring around these types of technologies. If you are interested in participating, please contact Strategic Project Manager Laura, at laju@itu.dk. 

Other events in the making are:
- Workshop on sustainable AI
- A meeting on green procurement

Look out for your invitations in the coming months!
 
If you are a member of the Center for Digital Welfare, you receive invitations for these activities in your inbox in due time. If you would like to learn more about how to become a member, please find more information on our website or reach out to CDW at cdw@itu.dk
 
Short News
In July it was announced that the Center co-lead and Associate Professor Irina Papazu won the prestigious Freeman Award for the publication Democratic Situations2024 has been proclaimed a very special election year due to the many elections, and on that basis, The European Association for Study of Science and Technology (EASST) has chosen to award exactly this book, which is co-edited with Associate Professor Andreas Birkbak from RUC. We are very proud of them both! Access the book here.

On May 31st, our dear collegue and CDW member, Rasmus Tyge Haarløv defended his PhD thesis and earned his doctoral degree. His highly topical project is titled Making Sense of Air Pollution Modelling: Framed Uncertaincy, and investigates the potential miscommunication of uncertainties in air pollution research to policymakers, leading to an overreliance on precise but potentially misleading data and the marginalization of significant unmeasurable uncertainties in public policy. Huge congratulations to Rasmus, we look forward to following his future brilliant work.

On June 14th Center for Digital Welfare participated in a slightly cold, but lively and inspiring Folkemøde at Bornholm. Here we addressed the myriad dilemmas that technologies pose to us: On the one hand, they offer so many opportunities for improving our access to information, for improving our skills, for designing the future we want, but on the other hand, we often cannot foresee the environmental, privacy, safety and other ethical risks they entail. Taking departure in these serious topics, we turned them into a fun dilemma game with our entertaining panelists to explore the question "Will technology be our saviour or our demise?". Thank you to all contributors and participants for a fun day!

Another update from June is that we have sharpened our focus for the Emerging Theme 3, which now zooms in on digital wellbeing especially in organizational contexts, under the new title: Digital Wellbeing: Human-First vs. Digital First. As the reader might recall, Center for Digital Welfare organizes its research and collaboration work under strategic themes, which we identify as highly salient and topical issues for investigating the state of digital welfare today. The themes are revisited on a running basis, and all CDW members are welcome to suggest topics they would like to explore.

In June, we also said our heartfelt goodbyes to our Strategic Project Manager Line Nykjær Johansen, who we thank for all her commited and skillful work at the Center. We sincerely commend her next workplace for winning such a gifted new team member. On that occasion, we also welcomed Laura Juncker-Jensen as the successor in the role. Laura is a familiar colleague, who already knows the ropes of Center for Digital Welfare, and we are happy to have her back in a temporary position as maternity cover for Kitt Plinia Nielsen.

If this newsletter sparked an idea or a question, as always, you can adress any queries to cdw@itu.dk.  




 
New Press Releases
"Digital tvang skaber problematisk gråzone i borgernes møde med velfærdsstaten"
Article in Altinget co-written by Irina Papazu, Associate Professor & co-lead of CDW.
"Arbejdsgivernes it-begejstring
giver technostress og skyggearbejde"
Article in Akademikerbladet referencing Louise Harder Fischer, Associate Professor and co-lead of CDW.
 
 
Børsen Opinion Piece on EU's AI Act
Black and white portrait of Cancan wearing black glasses a white shirt and a black west

Center representative Cancan Wang recently published an opinion piece in Børsen about the recently adopted EU AI Act. As a special edition, we are bringing the full-length article in English translation here. We hope you enjoy the read.

EU’s AI Act doesn’t hinder innovation but accelerates safe and responsible growth

The AI Act, which is intended to regulate artificial intelligence on the European market, has been met with some resistance from the business sector. However, it is a pro-nounced misconception that EU regulation will necessarily hinder the innovation of artificial intelligence in Europe.

Although regulations on artificial intelligence impose some limitations, they also func-tion as a roadmap for safe and responsible development of the technology. AI Systems that do not violate EU citizens' fundamental rights such as personal assistants, task automation, and AI in advertising, will largely not be regulated. Meanwhile, systems such as CV scanners used to select candidates for a position before they reach an ac-tual desk will be subject to special legislation to prevent bias and discrimination. Sy-stems that pose a particularly high risk, as for example AI used for facial recognition or assesings risks of criminal activity among citizens, will be completely prohibited.

The AI Act may lead to investment opportunities and ensures that global development is based on European values, while also creating a roadmap to safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence.

Europe's influence on the global market
The AI Act was adopted by the European Parliament in March 2024 and is the first of its kind in the world. However, this is not the first time that the EU has legislated in the digital realm. The regulation falls under a wide range of other initiatives aimed at cy-bersecurity, social media, the internet, and data protection law, such as the GDPR, with which most people are familiar.

It is therefore not new for the Union to impose strict legislative requirements in digiti-zation, but there is also a very specific reason for it. When the EU imposes require-ments on, for example, artificial intelligence, they apply not only to companies in Eu-rope but to all companies worldwide that have AI-systems placed on the European marked. In other words, if you want to trade with and in Europe, you must meet a wide range of stringent requirements, which most global companies are willing to do, as the Union constitutes the largest single market in the world.

Thus, by being the first and most stringent to regulate artificial intelligence, the EU can influence global development so that it is based on European values and ensures the fundamental rights of EU citizens.

An example of this was when the GDPR was adopted in 2016, which imposed restric-tions on how companies may use and collect data about EU citizens. Although the le-gislation only applies to the European market, many companies have chosen to adopt the GDPR not only because of the distinctly high value of market access, but also be-cause the costs of adapting requirements to different regions are higher than imple-menting the more stringent regulations as a global standard. In parellel, many states such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Korea, India,  and Japan and South Korea have developed similar data regulations. 

This means, that there is little incentive for companies to relocate their business out-side the Union as the EU legislation will likely be adopted by regions that currently have less regulated markets over the next few years. It may be true, as many businesses, organizations and leaders have expressed concerns about, that the legislation will im-pact startup companies more than the large global tech giants, who have more re-sources to deal with compliance.  While there is no conclusive assessment of the ac-tual compliance costs of the AI Act for SMEs, a forward-looking perspective suggests the regulations also opens up new investment opportunities for companies.

Indeed, it is not only the EU that imposes requirements on private companies; many other actors do as well, such as customers, partners, and investors. Many investment funds, in particular, have strict guidelines for which companies they can and will invest in. For example, many states, including Denmark, invest heavily in tech companies. However, without global guidelines, it is difficult for companies seeking investments to understand which requirements they need to meet. In this way, the AI Act can open up new investment opportunities because companies that comply with the regulation are likely to also meet the requirements of investment funds.

Guidance is needed to promote growth
While artificial intelligence holds great potential for addressing future challenges, it is also crucial that we take control of a technology that will affect large parts of society. Several public and private actors in Denmark are still hesitant to implement the tech-nology. Only about 44 percent of Danish companies use AI systems, which they ex-plain with, among other things, a lack of employee skills and knowledge about the technology. 

 As businesses are trying to jump the speedtrain to AI, the absence of understanding how the technology works is creating a “AI trust gap” both from the consumers and businesses, that are considerate of risks such as disinformation, bias, safety and se-curity. Meanwhile, examples from public authorities paint a similar picture of imple-mentation happening too quickly. For example, the municipality of Aarhus tried to use AI in evaluation of parents competences, but had to close the project, as it affected the decisions of the case workers too much.

Companies and organizations can benefit from the AI Act and use it as a roadmap to help them navigate around pitfalls and obstacles. This does not mean that we are done building. However, it ensures that we have a common direction and value base that can steer growth and the use of artificial intelligence in a responsible manner.

The EU is not as far along in digital development as regions such as the US and Asia, but equating this development with EU regulation of digitization is misleading. Econo-mists and Legal scholars suggested that fragmentation of Europe’s langugage, culture, and surprisingly, the lack of common law, may have been the culprits of the limited development of Europe’s tech industry. 

We may ask ourselves if Europe’s approach to tech should be measured by market sizes at all, when other factors such as ethics, sustainability and welfare also should be weighed in. And just as important, we must be aware that one does not necessarily exclude the other, as I have tried to argue in this opinion piece.

While we wait for the regulations to be finalized, the European Parliament elections is just around the corner, so we can conveniently ask ourselves that very question in the meantime - especially in Denmark. Can we both protect the rights of EU citizens and take the lead in development and implementation of artificial intelligence at the same time?

 
Accessibility
We are working on improving the accessibility of our newsletter. If you run into any issues while browsing the newsletter, or you have suggestions to make it more enjoyable, reach out to CDW at cdw@itu.dk.



 
 
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