Studies and Reports
India
Digital Safety of Children: Creating Safe Online Spaces
This article from Space2Grow discusses the organization’s role as a social impact consulting firm. It focuses on bridging the gap between donors, non-profits, and community-based organizations to create sustainable solutions for socio-economic issues
Don’t be a Fool 3.0 Survey Report
The "Don't Be a Fool" survey, conducted under the #KeepItReal initiative by Social & Media Matters, represents a groundbreaking attempt to analyze the perspective of misinformation and fake news in India as the country approaches national elections.
The State of Responsible AI in India 2023
This survey report by nasscom highlights the beliefs and perceptions of the Indian tech industry about its key strengths and critical areas for improvement when it comes to RAI compliance. The report is based on analyses of the data collected via a dipstick survey of 535 senior executives from across large, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups engaged in the commercial development and/or use of AI in India.
Indian government initiatives on cyberbullying: A case study on cyberbullying in Indian higher education institutions
The research article examines the rising issue of cyberbullying among youth in India, exacerbated by increased internet use. It evaluates the Indian Government’s initiatives, such as helplines, complaint boxes, and legal provisions, aimed at protecting vulnerable groups like children and women. Furthermore, it includes a survey conducted in higher education institutions to understand the factors contributing to cyberbullying and discusses measures to mitigate it in academic settings
‘Beyond Fake News’ BBC study 2018 – India
This BBC report examines the role of socio-political identity in the sharing of fake news in India. It explores how ordinary citizens engage with misinformation, driven by a sense of civic duty and nation-building, and the implications for media credibility
The Global Drive to Control Big Tech
In the high-stakes battle between states and technology companies, the rights of internet users have become the main casualties.
‘Beyond Fake News’ BBC study 2018 - India
Our analysis suggests that people India are not that concerned about fake news, no matter what they say in quantitative surveys. First, the initial association with or the working definition of the term ‘fake news’ is largely limited to scams (all kinds of schemes, offers and attempted cons) that they keep coming across, or messages in the realm of the fantastical, which are just too incredible to believe.
Temporal Patterns in COVID-19 misinformation in India
We find that the types of content relied upon to relay different kinds of misinformation varies. For instance, misinformation in the category “casualty” relies heavily on visual content, since the goal of these is to invoke a physical reaction, often fear or disgust. In contrast, tweets on cures and misleading statistics use a high amount of text, because the goal with these is to mislead by offering specifics.
International
Responsible Use of Technology: The Salesforce Case Study
The World Economic Forum Responsible Use of Technology project aims to help bring the worlds of business, civil society and government together by providing leaders with practical tools to: 1) educate and train their employees to think more about responsible technology, 2) design their organization to promote more ethical behaviour and outcomes, and 3) design and develop more responsible technology products.
Responsible Use of Technology: The IBM Case Study
The World Economic Forum Responsible Use of Technology project aims to provide practical resources for organizations to operationalize ethics in their use of technology. This White Paper is the second in a series that highlights processes, tools and organizational constructs that facilitate the responsible design, development and implementation of technology. It presents IBM’s ethics journey, which can encourage organizations to adopt and operationalize technology ethics, and seeks to promote discussion and evaluation of IBM’s methods, tools and experiences.
Responsible Use of Technology: The Microsoft Case Study
The World Economic Forum Responsible Use of Technology project aims to provide practical resources for organizations to operationalize ethics in technology. This White Paper, with its focus on Microsoft Corporation, highlights tools and processes that facilitate responsible technology product design and development.
The Global Drive to Control Big Tech
In the high-stakes battle between states and technology companies, the rights of internet users have become the main casualties. A growing number of governments are asserting their authority over tech firms, often forcing the businesses to comply with online censorship and surveillance. These developments have contributed to an unprecedented assault on free expression online, causing global internet freedom to decline for an 11th consecutive year.
GAIA: A Benchmark for General AI Assistants
This article introduces GAIA, a benchmark designed to evaluate the capabilities of General AI Assistants. It presents real-world questions that test fundamental abilities such as reasoning, multi-modality handling, web browsing, and tool-use proficiency, aiming to bridge the performance gap between AI systems and human respondents.
Measuring trends in Artificial Intelligence: 2023 AI Index Report
The AI Index is an independent initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), led by the AI Index Steering Committee, an interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry. The annual report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data relating to artificial intelligence, enabling decision-makers to take meaningful action to advance AI responsibly and ethically with humans in mind.
Identifying and Eliminating CSAM in Generative ML Training Data and Models
This study investigates the presence of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in the LAION-5B dataset, which was used to train generative machine learning models like Stable Diffusion. It employs various techniques to detect CSAM and provides recommendations for mitigating this issue in training sets and models
Data privacy laws – Global map
Compare data protection laws around the world.
Internet addiction prevalence and quality of (real) life: a meta-analysis of 31 nations across seven world regions
Internet Addiction (IA) prevalence was higher for nations with greater traffic time consumption, pollution, and dissatisfaction with life in general. The prevalence rate of IA varies across world regions. IA prevalence is inversely associated with the quality of life, as reflected by both subjective (life satisfaction) and objective (quality of environmental conditions) indicators.
WHO Mental Health Reports
Mental health conditions are increasing worldwide. Mainly because of demographic changes, there has been a 13% rise in mental health conditions and substance use disorders in the last decade (to 2017). Mental health conditions now cause 1 in 5 years lived with disability. Around 20% of the world’s children and adolescents have a mental health condition, with suicide the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds. Approximately one in five people in post-conflict settings have a mental health condition.
Unlocking Digital Competition - Furman Report
Our central conclusion is that digital markets will only work well if they are supported with strong pro-competition policies that open up opportunities for innovation, and counter the forces that can lead to high concentration and a single winner. Solely relying on merger and antitrust enforcement can create delays and uncertainty that can be bad for large incumbents and small entrants alike.
Digital Election Interference – Freedom House.Org
Major authoritarian powers like Russia and China have been implicated in cyberattacks and information warfare linked to elections in democratic states. In February 2019, three months before Australia’s federal elections, security agencies reported a cyberattack against the computer networks of Parliament and the three main political parties that was attributed to China’s Ministry of State Security.
Protecting privacy in an AI-driven world
“As artificial intelligence evolves, it magnifies the ability to use personal information in ways that can intrude on privacy interests by raising analysis of personal information to new levels of power and speed.”
Disinformation Index
The Global Disinformation Index provides advertisers, ad tech companies and platforms with trusted, non-partisan and independent ratings to assess a site’s disinformation risks.
Raghuram Rajan: Inclusive growth and role of technology.
Of course, the longer run answer is for customers to become more savvy. Can the technology sector help educate people in financial matters? After all, finance is not something most people learn in schools, but it is something they encounter every day in the world. Low cost but high quality distance finance education is something the country very much needs and we look to entrepreneurs here to think of innovative ways to provide it.
Artificial Intelligence: a Full-Spectrum Regulatory Challenge
In case of Facial Recognition in the Government’s case, absolute prohibition of centralised mass surveillance systems is a more efficient policy, rather than expecting them to comply with stringent regulations. Some of the biggest companies in the world have entered into contracts with governments to implement facial recognition amidst pushback from activist groups.
FB Ad Library
The ad library provides advertising transparency by offering a comprehensive, searchable collection of all ads currently running from across Facebook apps and services, including Instagram.
Google Transparency Report
Sharing data that sheds light on how the policies and actions of governments and corporations affect privacy, security, and access to information.
Children in a Digital World - UNICEF
- A boy driven nearly to suicide by cyberbullying that follows him everywhere.
- A 14-year-old girl whose ex-boyfriend created a social media profile featuring nude pictures he forced her to take of herself.
- An eight-year-old girl in the Philippines forced to perform live-stream sex acts by a neighbour who operates a child sexual abuse website.
Beyond the harm to individual children that digital technology can enable or abet is its capacity to incite violence on a massive scale that affects the lives and futures of hundreds of thousands of children.
Declaration of G20 Digital Ministers
We recognise that companies have to be prepared for the “new normal” and for further technological shifts, in order to cope with future challenges towards a sustainable, open, shared and more innovative economy. We acknowledge, as well, that there is a necessity to support MSMEs’ inclusiveness in the digital economy and that there is a need to increase our efforts on developing human-centred approach to digital economy development that accounts for the needs and perspective of traditionally vulnerable groups.
Equality Labs FB Asia report - Caste and Religious Hate Speech
We urge Facebook, the Indian public, and the global Internet Freedom community to act quickly and appropriately based on our findings. Without urgent intervention, we fear we will see hate speech weaponized into a trigger for large-scale communal violence. We further urge Facebook to take responsibility for its platform, and to cooperate with representatives of Indian civil society and Internet Freedom activists. Facebook must act to mitigate specific risks, and get more aggressive about the platform’s impact on the physical safety and fundamental human rights of India’s most vulnerable communities.
Context Before Code - Ranking Digital Rights.
The way a company responds to a crisis does not just affect its bottom line. It can have profound implications for the fundamental rights of millions, if not billions, of people, whether or not they are “users” of a product or service that the company provides.
Cyber Tipline Child Sexual Abuse Material Study
The public and electronic service providers can make reports of suspected online enticement of children for sexual acts, child sexual molestation, child sexual abuse material, child sex tourism, child sex trafficking, unsolicited obscene materials sent to a child, misleading domain names, and misleading words or digital images on the internet.
IT Act 2000
This collection features research reports and other publications on a wide range of legal topics prepared by the Law Library of Congress in response to requests or recurring interest from Congress and other federal government entities on issues concerning foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL).
The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019
Obligations of data fiduciary, grounds for processing of personal data without consent, personal data and sensitive personal data of children, rights of data principal, transparency and accountability measures, restriction on transfer of personal data outside india, data protection authority of india, penalties and compensation…
Measuring the prevalence of online violence against women
The internet presents a double-edged sword for women. On the one hand, it provides vital spaces for women seeking expression and opportunity. On the other, it’s increasingly a vector for abusers targeting women. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened this situation as women spend more time online, increasing their exposure to threats. With a view to enable informed decision making on the issue, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) completed a study in 2020, developing a credible and granular measurement of the global prevalence of online violence against women.