Artificial intelligence is likely to transform the public sector by automating many government tasks—including making combat decisions. But, according to experts at a recent symposium held  at Harvard University, this “over-the-horizon” technology can only guide and inform government leaders. There will always be a need for human decision making—and for clear ethical standards to prevent harmful intentions.

At the September 20 conference, “AI-Government and AI Arms Races and Norms,” organized by the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI), Professor Marc Rotenberg underscored the growing gap between informed government decision-making and the reality of our technology-driven world. “Governments may ultimately lose control of these systems if they don’t take action,” he told some 60 attendees.

Rosenberg, who teaches at Georgetown University Law School, is President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and a member of the AI World Society Standards and Practice Committee,

Prof. Matthias Scheutz, Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory at Tufts University, said the greatest risk caused by AI and robotics technologies is when unconstrained machine learning is out of control. This can happen when AI systems acquire knowledge and start to pursue goals that were not intended by their human designers, he said. For example, “If an AI program operating the power grid decides to cut off energy in certain areas for better power utilization overall, it will leave millions of people without electricity, which consequently turns out to be an AI accidental failure.”

Scheutz also said that common preventive solutions inside and outside the system are largely insufficient to safeguard AI and robotics technologies. Even with “emergency buttons,” the system itself might finally set its own goal to prevent a shutdown previously set up by humans.

The best way to safeguard AI systems is to build ethical provisions directly into the learning, reasoning, recognition and other algorithms. In his presentation, he demonstrated “ethical testing” to catch and handle ethical violations.

Here’s a link to video of Scheutz’s talk. https://youtu.be/66EeYzkTxwA

Prof. Joseph Nye, emeritus of Harvard University, who created the concept of “Soft Power” diplomacy, focused on the expansion of Chinese firms in the US market and their ambition to surpass the US in AI. Nye said the notion of an AI arms race and geopolitical competition in AI can have profound effects on our society. However, he added, predictions that China will overtake the US in AI by 2030 are “uncertain” and “indeterminate” because China’s only advantage is having more data and little concern about privacy.

Nye also point out that as people unleash AI, which is leading to warfare and autonomous offensives, we should have treaties in place to control the technology, managed perhaps by international institutions that will monitor AI programs in various countries.

During the symposium, Tuan Nguyen and Michael Dukakis, cofounders of the Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI), announced MDI’s cooperation with AI World–the industry’s largest conference and expo covering the business and technology of enterprise AI, to be held in Boston December 3-5, 2018.

Nguyen said, “Our cooperation marks the determination between two organizations toward achieving the goal of developing, measuring, and tracking the progress of ethical AI policy-making and solution adoption by governments and corporations.” Nguyen also introduced Eliot Weinman – Chairman of AI World Conference and Expo as a new member of AIWS Standards and Practice Committee.

Conference details are published in the current issue of AIWS Weekly.
–Dick Pirozzolo

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR, content and digital marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Dick Pirozzolo is a member of the Group; the Michael Dukakis Institute, formed by Boston Global Forum, is his client. 

Having just published a book on the late 1960s, and having driven past the famed Corita Kent gas tanks on route 93 South of Boston hundreds of times, I wondered, on entering the wonderful new exhibit “Corita Kent and the Language of Pop” at the Harvard Fogg Museum how I could possibly have missed Kent’s amazing presence in the Pop Art scene.

The show juxtaposes some 60 works by Kent–who was born in 1918 and became a nun in 1936–with approximately the same number of works by  known pop figures such as Andy Warhol,  Jim Dine,  Edward Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, and others.  It examines Kent’s screen prints; that 1971 bold “rainbow swash” design for the Boston Gas tank, as well as films, books, and other works.

But in a talk after the September 3 opening, Susan Dackerman, consultative curator of prints at the Harvard Art Museums, said that she herself had  not known much about Kent’s  work until she met another curator’s sister–Mary Anne Karia (née Mikulka), a former student of Kent’s at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, and a long-time friend of Kent’s. Mikulka showed Dackerman the notes, papers and prints saved from her student and later days. That introduction, in 2010, turned into a multi-year research project in which a team of Harvard art historians and graduate students began to place Kent–who left the convent and moved to Boston in 1968– in the artistic and cultural movements of her time.

The exhibition explores how Kent’s work both responded to and advanced the concerns of Vatican II, a movement to modernize the Catholic Church and make it more relevant to contemporary society. The church advocated conducting the Mass in English. Kent, like her pop art contemporaries, simultaneously turned to vernacular texts for inclusion in her vibrant prints, drawing from such colloquial sources as product slogans, street signs, and Beatles lyrics. Vatican II also  advocated having priests turning to face their congregants–a theme shown in the reversals of words in various Kent prints which require viewers to commune or relate to the work in new ways, as pointed out by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities. While Kent questioned the authority of the Church, she also took up  the church’s fight against poverty as an artistic theme. 

By bringing “Wonder Bread” into her work,  according to American studies graduate student Eva Payne Kent, Kent pointed out the need for food and  the leavening qualities of bread–as well as the symbolism of the communion wafer, and the sharing of bread as a means of communion among everyday people.

Kent thus emphasized the egalitarian rather than the authoritarian, and, unlike the implied messages of recognized pop artists,  her messages made her art not purely critique of the commercial world but brought out the importance of quotidian life.

In 1968, a year after she was featured as the new nun on cover of Newsweek Magazine, Kent left the convent and her teaching position and moved to Boston.

At this point, as sixties political protests escalated, Kent began to include news photo images of war, racial struggles, political figures in her prints– perhaps relying less on words to express emotion.  I found these works less vivid–but they packed a punch-. I was especially taken by an anti-war print that included a photo of Daniel and PHilip Berrigan, friends of hers who were priests and antiwar activists with whom I interacted at Cornell and later, during the Trial of the Harrisburg 8.

Asked in Q&A why Kent had not been considered important to the Pop Art, Dackerman pointed out that a center of the movement had been the Ferris Art Gallery, in Los Angeles–and that the recognized pop artists were often referred to as the “Ferris Studs.”  Not only was she a woman, Dackerman said, but she was, of all things “a nun.”. Another speaker mentioned that unlike her male counterparts, Kent, then called “Sister Mary Corita,” might have been considered “too cheery” and positive about the Church, possibilities for communion, and the egalitarian nature of the commercial world.

All in all–the show is a must-see for anyone interested in the 1960s, pop art, female artists or the relationship of art, religion, politics and social change.,

Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s and of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity.
Print and e-versions of both books are available on Amazon or Kindle.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Cambridge, MA.

Last week at swissnex, the Swiss Consulate in Cambridge, university communications and institutional research experts  expressed frustration at the ways in which university rankings are established–and doubt about the accuracy and usefulness of most rankings.

Urs Hugentobler, head of Institutional Research at ETH Zürich/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–the top ranked university outside of the US– described the vagaries of ranking systems and especially the nebulous “reputation” category, which both impacts and is impacted by a university’s ranking.

Norbert  Staub,  head of internal communications and deputy head of corporate communications at ETH, emphasizzed the importance of  managing a university’s reputation in order to attract students, donors, funding, faculty and the like–all of which influence and are influenced by  rankings.

Roundtable participants  Dawn Terkla,  Associate Provost for Institutional Research and Evaluation at Tufts University,  and  John Scanlon,  an institutional researcher at Harvard,  described the challenges involved in responding to differing requests from numerous  ranking agencies and in evaluating the meaning of rankings when results change from year to year.

Hugentobler pointed out that rankings  ordinarily do not change substantially over the short term–but Terkla  said that one year, Tufts saw a 30% decline when a ranking agency changed its methodology.    All of the participants agreed that rankings that can be inaccurate, haphazard and difficult to influence.

Gina Vild, associate dean for communications and external relations at Harvard Medical School said that while it is not easy for a university composed of many smaller organizations to raise its overall ranking, it may well be possible for individual units  to raise their rankings through communications outreach.  In fact, she said, even a crisis, if well-handled, can  help raise rankings by increasing an institution’s name recognition and enhancing its reputation.

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Joe Wrinn, former director of news and public affairs at Harvard, emphasized the importance of honesty and transparency in dealing with crises and the media.

But several participants   cited examples of  rather nefarious tactics–such as inviting huge numbers of unqualified applicants to apply for admission and then turning them down in order up appear more selective and, thus, obtain higher rankings. And before the meeting, Hugentobler mentioned that it is not uncommon for Asian universities to contact those in Europe–at the very least  enhanging name recognition should they be contacted by a ranking company.

As moderator, I asked if any of the participants knew of instances when the rankings had been used to encourage positive change within a university; no one responded.

When I mentioned that it seemed like universities are held hostage by the rankers,  Terka said that if universities don’t  respond,  they will likely be ranked anyway.  Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, agreed–saying that sometimes university units are ranked even if they don’t exist.

When I asked what can be done to remedy the situation, both Terkla and Scanlon mentioned that institutional researchers often communicate with ranking agencies in order to ascertain what information is being sought. Terkla said that an organization comprised of  institutional research experts frequently discusses the rankings.   James Honan,  senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, advised:  “Educate your trustees” so they understand what rankings do and do not show.

HarrisCom Group member David Rosen, former Chief Communications Officer at Brandeis and  Harvard Universities, the University of Chicago, and Emerson College, posted a blog on various  international ranking systems and how communicators can influence results at eduniverse.org:

—Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is president of the Harris Communications Group, a strategic pr and marketing communications firm specializing in health, science, technology, education and energy.

Newspapers have long kept tabs on the changing world–but have themselves been slow to modernize. To  flourish these days,
when anyone with a computer can be a publisher,  news organizations must develop a “culture of innovation. ”

So said Richard Gingras, the head of News Products at Google,  on May 11, 2012 in a talk at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation.

Gingras, a founder of Salon.com and long-term media technologist , said “I push people to rethink every aspect of what they’re doing”–including their mission, ethical guidelines, how they interact with their audiences, transparency regarding sources,  and even whether reporters divulge their personal political positions. In light of today’s powerful new technologies and human interactions,  “innovation  must be part of an organization’s DNA,”  at the core of newspapers’ culture, and  incorporated into “the role of every member of the team.”

Gingras pointed out that this by no means the first “disruption” time for the media.  With the advent of television,  for example, newspaper advertising declined and in some cities, the number of newspapers went from five to one or two.   This was not great for the newspapers that went out of business and  led to monopolitistic control by the  survivors. But it also led to    “40  golden years of profitability” for those survivors.

Today, the Internet has “disaggregated” the advertising economy., he said.  No longer do consumers look to their local newspapers for car ads, for example: rather, they search the Internet for information and deals.  “In the past, you could have an ad in the New York Times for Tiffany’s near an article on starvation in Darfur… or articles for garden centers in  the Lifestyles section,” Gingras said.   But on the Internet, such “vertical models” for advertising  are not effective.  ” Might news organizations’ Web sites do better as “a stable of focused brands with independent business models?” he asked.

Gingras also suggested that news organizations:

• Optimize news Web sites for multiple entry points,  because individual story pages are, today, more valuable than first or home pages. These individual pages should be updated so that urls remain constant–thus optimizing search engine results.

• Include more “computational journalism”–in which reporters post interactive information tables that would allow readers to answer their own, individualized questions.  For example, in a story on the state of education, provide tables showing student progress in school districts across the city–so that parents could assess statistics on their own children’s schools

•  Leverage the assistance of  “the trusted crowd”  (interact with readers and keep them involved)

•  Make reporters responsible for updating their own stories–with “constant” urls  to encourage multiple visits to their pages

Gingras also said that  in a culture of bulletpoints, updates and posts,  there  is low return on investment for long articles–and advised keeping articles  under 500 words.

So  I’ll quit here–at 494.

A video of the complete talk  is posted at: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/newsitem.aspx?id=100198

–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris, a former national journalist and Nieman Fellow,  is president of the Harris Communications Group, a marketing and communications firm located in Cambridge, MA.

It’s not that often that a nationally-known journalists public admit to suffering from  post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but last week at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, Today Show Co-Anchor Ann Curry  did exactly that.

In delivering the Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture on foreign report,  Curry described both the importance and trauma of foreign reporting–saying that while she and her crew sometimes wonder if  their coverage of wars and international disasters make a difference, she believes that by calling attention to wrongdoing and suffering,  journalists do help make the world  more empathic place.

In the lecture, Curry, who has made 72 reporting trips to 48 countries since 2000,  told an audience of journalists that that  any correspondent covering such areas who says s/he  doesn’t have PTSD} ” is either lying or doesn’t realize it.”   For journalists, the disorder is often first evidenced “when you don’t care,” any more.  Signs  and symptoms include emotional rigidness, avoidance, and an uncharacteristic lack of empathy, Curry said.

Curry and her team members “talk things out” when they’re experiencing  those signs and some undergo counseling, she said.   As a foreign reporter, “You need to be an emotional athlete to deal with trauma, with emotions…to see past the differences in languages, to look at people as if they’re your own mother, brother, sister, your own child. When you don’t do that, you’re not effective as a reporter, you appear elitistist…It’s  crucial that you care, that you try to understand the experience and point of view of the people you are writing about, she said.  ” Because if you don’t care, your viewers won’t care, either.

“When my team gathers, we often ask ourselves, why are we doing  this,” Curry said.  ”They can’t pay you enough to take the physical and emotional risk this requires.”  Not only are crews frequently threatened with violence, but “you’re leaving your family; there’s the maddening reality that it’s a battle [with news organization]  to get there. But there’s the sense of mission, the hope that some good will come of what you do. It’s an act of faith in the future.”

Curry said that she has a mission “to report on stories no one cares about”  sand asked, “If more reporters had paid attention to what the Nazis were doing in 1941, would so many people have died?”

In answer to a question posed for former Nieman Curator Robert Giles, Curry  said that in the current economic downturn, the US audience is less interested in foreign coverage than it had previously been–and that with cutbacks in news organizations, it’s more difficult now to convince news directors to send teams abroad.  Where once NBC had crews on the ground in many places,  she said, “now we travel  abroad from here.” But despite the difficulties, she will continue to cover difficult stories–in part because, if she and others don’t, aid organizations will not receive funding donations from the American public.

Curry brought tears to my eyes when she described  a 16-year-old Congolese girl who saw her parents killed, was chained to a tree,  raped, and when she couldn’t walk, was left for dead. Men from her village carried  her to a hospital. She was pregnant, and the baby died.   Two years later, in  2008,  when Curry interviewed her in an operating room and touched her hand; the young girl said she didn’t want revenge. “Instead she said ‘All I want is to rise out of this bed and thank the people who saved me and cared for me. I want to praise God, and I want to feel a mother’s love again.’

“Now, the cause of women in the Congo has been taken up by people in the US; there are  4K races to protect people from the violence,” Curry said. “As a reporter, you want to feel that some good has become of what you’ve done.”

But, she pointed out, wars and violence do not end.

In another village, in the Sudan, Curry said, men strafed a village, then lit arrows on fire and shot them at thatched roofs. When people ran out of their burning homes, the men shot at them,  shouting epithets.  Curry said she interviewed one woman– a mother– and her children. “She was just one of tens of thousands…

“After five trips to Sudan, ” she added, “I do sometimes wonder whether any of this works makes that much difference to people back on the ground. Sudan is the new Darfur, she said. People are living and dying in displaced person’s camps…”

Rather than become discouraged, Curry said,  ”We need to step back and look at the value of reporting with a wide view, through the scope of human history.  And you can’t help but realize that human empathy is growing.

“Where once, rape was a fact of war,  rape is now an international war crime.  The idea that it is wrong is wildfire. Information, truth,  lit this match, igniting wildfires across the world.

“I have no doubt that we’re evolving into a world of greater empathy.  If you can work through the PTSD, if you can raise your sword and report these stories,  you allow truth between nations and I encourage you to lift your sword.”

After the talk, the ever-versatile and inspiring Curry, who had donated her $1000 honorarium to Doctors Without Borders in Somalia, left –wearing the highest pair of heels I’ve ever seen–for a flight to Indianapolis, to cover the Superbowl.

Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris, a former national journalist, is president of the Harris Communications Group, a strategic communications firm in Cambridge, MA. \

The Morris Lecture honors Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent Joe Alex Morris, Jr., who covered the Middle East for 25 years before he was killed during the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Two years later his family, friends and colleagues founded the annual lecture by an American foreign correspondent or commentator.

While conservative commentator Laura Ingraham said yesterday on the Today Show that  President Obama has accomplished little of worth in his first two months in office, CBS  Evening News Producer Rick Kaplan would strongly disagree.

At a seminar held on Tuesday at  Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, Kaplan said that Obama’s record  so far has been “extraordinary.”

The “first 100 days” is a construct that began with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and can be a useful time for judging what policies are most important to a president– before Congress and  administration insiders have  a chance to “carve out turf”… and “start bickering,” Kaplan said.

In his view, Obama has used this period well.

The President  has frozen all of former President George W. Bush’s last minute  “midnight regulations,” ended the  “gag rule” prohibiting mention of abortion in organizations receiving federal funds; put  forth ethics and lobbying bills; and passed the $800B TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) legislation, Kaplan said.

Equally impressive was  Obama’s performance at the recent G20 Summit in London.  “I’ve never seen anything like it,”  Kaplan said. At the meeting of the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, “people  listened and were impressed. When he stood up, it was a proud moment for America.”

At news conferences, “he let the other guy go first. He grabbed President Sarkosi and the President of China; he huddled with them and [got] them to agree on a contentious set of…offshore policies. He makes the deal and at the end, both Sarcozy and the Chinese leader are smiling.

“In a meeting with the Russians on an arms deal, he gets a promise for a summit.  He meets with the South Koreans to talk about their concerns about [that day’s] North Korean missile launch….”

“And as he’s leaving…in an ‘organized leak,’ he said he would allow Cuban nationals to go and see their families and give them money.

“It was extraordinary to see him work the room in a respectful, aggressive, impressive. way. The leaders didn’t all agree with him, but they liked and respected him.”

“He’s had an extraordinary run in just 60 days. He never shows tension, never seems impacted one way or another or angry. He’s the ‘coolest guy in the room.”

Still, Kaplan said, not all is rosy.

For example,   the  President had known  known for weeks that bonuses were to be paid in Wall Street firms receiving bailout money, which made Obama’s  expressed “outrage” seemed hypocritical.  The press “let him off the hook a bit… It’s great to have dialogue, and the press corps is nervous about shaking up the relationship”  at a time [of economic crisis] where everyone is looking for stability.”

Asked (by me) what he foresees for the future of print media, Kaplan said that papers like the Boston Globe must survive,  and that the current “unwinding” could turn out to be healthy in the long run. It will likely lead to new models and  put an end to newspapers driven by owners who are more concerned about investors’ profits than their own communities, Kaplan said.

AMH

The New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.

Was surprised last night  when  two Pulitzer-prize-winning journalists locked horns on WGBH-TV’s  Greater Boston.

In a heated discussion of the New York Times’ threat to shutter the Boston Globe if employment concessions aren’t made,  former  Globe Columnist Eileen McNamara, who now teaches at Brandeis, charged that the Times is only out to save itself and doesn’t care about Boston or the Globe. She and host Emily Rooney criticized the Times for a lack of “transparency,” in threatening  to shut down the paper just a week after some 50 reporters were required to take buyouts or risk being laid off. McNamara called for an investigation into how Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. could have  so mishandled the papers’  strategies and finances.

Alex Jones, the former New York Times reporter who now directs Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, said that Sulzberger has long been seeking ways to keep his papers on sound financial footing and pointed out that the Times and Globe are just two  of many papers threatened by  huge operating losses.  With countless subscribers migrating to “free” news on the Internet and advertisers cutting back in the current financial crisis, several papers have already declared bankruptcy.

I agree with Jones  that there’s no point in focusing on the New York Times as the bad guy in all of this;   the Globe is crucial to the Boston and New England communities, which must find ways to keep the paper alive.

The Boston Foundation  has put together a blue ribbon panel to seek with solutions–which might include a takeover of the Globe  by a consortium of nonprofits until the Globe’s economic situation improves.

The Globe reported this morning that both employees and management will be taking cuts in pay and security, and that 20 bloggers, organized by Paul Levy, president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, simultaneously published a post asking readers to submit suggestions on how the Globe can improve its financial position.

(Levy’s blog is at runningahospital.blogspot.com).

I’ve joined the rally in a separate post.

I hope a solution is imminent  because good journalism provides crucial lifeblood to any community. As the so-called “fourth estate,” it serves as a watchdog on government, allows citizens to communicate with one another, and helps organize the thoughts, lives and livehoods of individuals and institution in a democracy.  Broadcast and Internet media certainly contribute to this–but, by and large, it’s  print reporters to do the heavy lifting.

AMH

Anita M. Harris is an award-winning former journalist who has founded a weekly alternative newspaper,  written for Newsday, produced documentaries for WRFM Radio and co-produced more than 100 live panel programs for the MacNeil/Lehrer Report (now the Newshour) of National Public television. She has taught journalism at Harvard andYale Universities and at Simmons College.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.

Over a brown-bag lunch at Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, New York Times Business  Columnist Joe Nocera opened his talk on the daunting question, “The Economy: Where Are We Headed?” with a resounding:  “I don’t know.”

He  offered background on the current (and future, he predicts) financial crisis, focusing first on the  housing foreclosure  crisis, and then on the banking industry.

Regarding housing, he suggested that– unfair as it may seem to people who didn’t buy into risky mortgages they couldn’t afford–we as an nation should bite the bullet and find ways to help those who did hold onto their homes.  One suggestion:  rather than  kick people out of foreclosed  homes, banks could rent them to the forfeiters  with an option to buy them back in five years with a 10 per cent down payment.

Regarding banking, Nocera said he sees no reason why “shareholder value” should remain the cornerstone  of banking industry strategy.  He  feels little sympathy for those who bet that they’d win big profits–up to 25 per cent–but lost, he said.

In Nocera’s view, Washington currently seems paralyzed by indecision over how to proceed.

One option  is the “bad bank,” in which the government buys all of the bad assets but that option has stalled because no one knows what the assets are worth.

Another is an  “RTC”  strategy like that used during the Savings and Loan Crisis of the  1980s,  in which the government formed the Resolution Trust Corporation to take over  banks. The RTC  allowed some to fold, and sold others, without the assets to new owners. The RTC  then gradually sold aoff the assets, with riders assuring that if the new owners made money, the government would receive a portion of the profits.  The process took ten years, Nocera said, but it worked.

While  President Obama  is confident about his ability to make decisions on many topics, the economy isn’t one of them, Nocera said.   Obama  chose  Bush holdover Tim Geitner as Treasury Secretary over former Harvard President Larry Summers mainly for personality reasons, but, Nocera predicted, Geitner is not likely to be able to move away from the thinking of the previous administration in order to come up with much needed  new options.

Nocera commented  wryly that his  blog, the Executive Suite,  has served as a clearning house for ideas on how to solve both the economic crisis–none of which appear to have been taken up by either administration.

Nocera’s latest post as of this writing is entitled” Bankers Gone Bonkers.”  It appeared on January 30, 2009 at http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/.

AMH

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.