Commentary and analysis

New AI tools will have a huge impact on how people work and live and can support innovation and productivity across sectors. But it is also important to be mindful of its potential for misuse. Governments, policymakers, and other stakeholders must be proactive to ensure that these tools are not exploited to cause harm.

There is an increasingly visible phenomenon within Russia’s Big Tech scene: the pursuit of horizontal monopolization of the internet, or ‘ecosystemization.’

As in any era of exponential growth, the speed at which benefits are created for society is closely followed by potential threats that must be guarded against. Cyber risks pose a threat to the efficient delivery of key services and to the personal information of individual citizens. Service delivery is rapidly becoming more digital on the infrastructure front, but the range of electronic government solutions that have been deployed is even broader.

This year “will remain a year of very constrained supply chains,” Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger said at the Atlantic Council, and “we expect the shortages to continue into 2023.” 

Communities are evolving; as is the data they generate, so government service delivery must evolve as well. Richer data comes with a wide array of opportunities and a proportionate number of risks. Therefore, the future of digital government and centric service delivery requires a comprehensive roadmap that takes into account each area’s starting point, resources, and objectives.

To properly cope with climate-related dangers, the military must be able to future-proof its installations to defend themselves against twenty-first-century threats, specifically by capitalizing on the use of smart technologies.

Automation has the potential to displace millions of jobs, while creating new ones. Drastic shifts in the labor market should offer both hope and caution; they will impact each nation’s economy significantly, and alter the demand for skills in employees, but may also stir social structures and affect citizens’ trust in their respective governments, public institutions, and the private sector. How should global leaders react?

What can the United States do to reap the benefits of the GeoTech Decade and tame the era’s threats? Here are the key takeaways from the conversation.

The decade to come will be the “GeoTech Decade,” in which the technology trends that began in previous years will become fixed in their impact on society. The Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data launched its first report with recommendations to guide leaders as they make choices regarding technology and data.

Carol Dumaine’s latest in a blog post series on “Reimagining a Just Society” recalls the tragic condo collapse in Florida last June and asks whether the commons elements of a typical condominium association suggest any parallels for understanding “global commons” or public goods in an age of pandemics, climate change and AI.

The question of ‘is this working as intended’ is applicable to contemporary concepts of national and international security as well as of economic value, growth, and development. Given how our world is being reshaped by new technologies, data capabilities, and geopolitics, leaders in both the public and private sector need to pause and consider if governance and geopolitics in today’s world are actually working – or not.

On a radically transformed planet, different conceptual maps are necessary for understanding what today’s priorities must be. These maps, or mental models, inform the framing that policy and decision makers use to weigh their options. Limitations in our conceptual frames can drastically limit the scope of considered futures.

In retrospect, the COVID-19 pandemic may mark a paradigm shift in global society if governments and their citizens worldwide today embrace its lessons, including many still emerging. One of these lessons concerns the dangers of ignoring knowledge we already had about interconnections between global public health, economic and national security, and ecological degradation.

This blog post series will explore the meaning of a “just society” through multiple lenses and in the context of today’s challenges, including but not limited to the coronavirus pandemic. With contributions from multiple authors, it aims to stimulate thinking and questions that distill the prerequisites and responsibilities for “just societies” in our times. COVID-19 spotlights […]

The GeoTech Center’s mission is to define practicable initiatives to ensure new technologies and advances in data capabilities benefit people, prosperity, and peace in open societies. Its overarching goal is a “world comprised of just societies.” The GeoTech’s mandate is an ambitious one and, while focused on applying new technologies to solutions to global problems, is anchored in an explicit assumption that its efforts will promote just societies.

Dr. Tiffany Vora continues her insights on vaccine hesitancy by laying out a human-centered health campaign approach that multiple sectors, from public health to social media companies, can consider.

Dr. Tiffany Vora shares insights from a recent peer-reviewed investigation of online interactions about vaccination and integrates these insights with an orthogonal approach to understanding vaccine hesitancy.