COVID-19, authoritarianism and AI
This week we are serving up new analyses and updates on COVID-19 as the virus makes its way across the globe and triggers an array of international responses, from quarantines to cancelled football matches. We're closely watching how this global health event is setting a modern precedent for emergency governance and information authority, and impacting public trust in institutions.
Coronavirus is a big part of the news cycle these days, but we also have stories this week on internet shutdowns, AI and disease detection, and vaccines. Thanks for reading, and have a good weekend!
Here's your weekly roundup!
How the Coronavirus Revealed Authoritarianism’s Fatal Flaw (The Atlantic)
As 50 million people are under lockdown in China, Meedan board member Zeynep Tufekci writes about how China’s use of technology for surveillance and censorship may have created an environment in which the country's authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, cannot see what's happening in his own country.
"It’s not clear why Xi let things spin so far out of control. It might be that he brushed aside concerns from his aides until it was too late, but a stronger possibility is that he did not know the crucial details. Hubei authorities may have lied, not just to the public but also upward—to the central government. Just as Mao didn’t know about the massive crop failures, Xi may not have known that a novel coronavirus with sustained human-to-human transmission was brewing into a global pandemic until too late." - The Atlantic
Can AI flag disease outbreaks faster than humans? Not quite (Associated Press)
Early warning systems for disease outbreaks scan through social media, online news articles and government reports for signs of upcoming epidemics. That's what happened in Boston at the end of 2019—AI systems predicted an outbreak in China before COVID-19 was confirmed. However, human scientists made a similar alert just 30 minutes later. Is AI faster and more effective than people at detecting these types of health events? Not entirely. It took human intelligence to "recognize the significance of the outbreak and then awaken response from the public health community."
"For now, AI-powered disease-alert systems can still resemble car alarms — easily triggered and sometimes ignored. A network of medical experts and sleuths must still do the hard work of sifting through rumors to piece together the fuller picture. It’s difficult to say what future AI systems, powered by ever larger datasets on outbreaks, may be able to accomplish." - Associated Press
Six tips to make science and health fact-checks sexier (and trustworthy) (Poynter)
As information about coronavirus swirls around online spaces, Poynter offers ways to make fact-checks about these types of claims more appealing to readers. One of the most surprising tips on the list? Correcting others on social media actually works, the outlet reports. So consider this your pass to tell your relatives when they're wrong about miracle cures.
Leticia Bode, associate professor at Georgetown University, proved with numbers that corrections are effective. It doesn’t matter if they are presented by the platforms (through their algorithms), by reputable organizations or by regular users amongst themselves. According to Bode, corrections should happen as fast as possible and provide quality URLs with clear headlines. “Observational correction” is also a powerful that must be stimulated. “Observation correction happens when I am not getting corrected but somebody else is and I see it”.
Targeted, cut off, and left in the dark: how internet shutdowns became an even greater threat to human rights in 2019 (Access Now)
Internet shutdowns are becoming more common, lasting longer and impacting larger and more vulnerable groups of people. That's what the 2019 Access Now report on internet shutdowns found after studying the phenomenon year-over-year. Two observations that are new to 2019 are the increasing difficulty to access information about shutdowns in some countries, as well as citizens holding governments to account more than in previous years.
"As more shutdowns happen in contexts where grave human rights violations are occurring, they are also becoming increasingly difficult to detect, verify, and confirm. In 2019, we had a difficult time verifying shutdowns as they occurred in Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, and other countries either because there was a violent conflict in the background or because they targeted a specific village or town.
Despite the increasing threat of internet shutdowns, people are taking more actions to defend themselves through legal channels. From Zimbabwe to Sudan, Russia, and India, more and more advocates are taking their governments to court to challenge these blatant and arbitrary shutdowns." - Access Now
Vaccines, Misinformation, And The Internet (NPR)
When pediatrician Nicole Baldwin made a pro-vaccine TikTok video, she became the target of harassment and intimidation from anti-vaccine activists online. In the second episode of NPR's examination of anti-vaccine sentiments, Stanford expert Renee DiResta talks about why the Internet is fertile ground for low-quality information and what tech platforms are doing to try to solve that problem.
"In the early days of social media, bad health information was rampant. But in that last few years, that's begun to change, says Renee DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory. "There was realization that there were certain societal harms that could be traced back to the absolute unfettered use of these platforms." - NPR
Open Source Investigation
An Officer And A Diplomat: The Strange Case Of The GRU Spy With A Red Notice
Bellingcat
"In this investigation conducted jointly with our partners Tamedia (Switzerland) and The Insider (Russia), we identify a key member of the recently indicted trio who, following the two failed assassination attempts in Bulgaria in 2015, was accredited to a diplomatic post under his real name in Switzerland. From his new base in Geneva, he continued to work for GRU under diplomatic cover, likely assisted various secret service operations in Switzerland, and may have taken part in the preparation of the Skripal poisoning." - Bellingcat