484 research outputs found
Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law
This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies
Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial
A Survey on Deep Multi-modal Learning for Body Language Recognition and Generation
Body language (BL) refers to the non-verbal communication expressed through
physical movements, gestures, facial expressions, and postures. It is a form of
communication that conveys information, emotions, attitudes, and intentions
without the use of spoken or written words. It plays a crucial role in
interpersonal interactions and can complement or even override verbal
communication. Deep multi-modal learning techniques have shown promise in
understanding and analyzing these diverse aspects of BL. The survey emphasizes
their applications to BL generation and recognition. Several common BLs are
considered i.e., Sign Language (SL), Cued Speech (CS), Co-speech (CoS), and
Talking Head (TH), and we have conducted an analysis and established the
connections among these four BL for the first time. Their generation and
recognition often involve multi-modal approaches. Benchmark datasets for BL
research are well collected and organized, along with the evaluation of SOTA
methods on these datasets. The survey highlights challenges such as limited
labeled data, multi-modal learning, and the need for domain adaptation to
generalize models to unseen speakers or languages. Future research directions
are presented, including exploring self-supervised learning techniques,
integrating contextual information from other modalities, and exploiting
large-scale pre-trained multi-modal models. In summary, this survey paper
provides a comprehensive understanding of deep multi-modal learning for various
BL generations and recognitions for the first time. By analyzing advancements,
challenges, and future directions, it serves as a valuable resource for
researchers and practitioners in advancing this field. n addition, we maintain
a continuously updated paper list for deep multi-modal learning for BL
recognition and generation: https://github.com/wentaoL86/awesome-body-language
Transition 2.0: Re-establishing Constitutional Democracy in EU Member States
The central question of Transition 2.0 is this: what (and how) may a new government do to re-establish constitutional democracy, as well as repair membership within the European Union, without breaching the European rule of law? This volume demonstrates that EU law and international commitments impose constraints but also offer tools and assistance for facilitating the way back after rule of law and democratic backsliding. The various contributions explore the constitutional, legal, and social framework of 'Transition 2.0'.Dieser Band zeigt, dass das EU-Recht und die internationalen Verpflichtungen zwar Zwänge auferlegen, aber auch Instrumente und Hilfestellungen bieten, um den Weg zurück in die Europäische Union nach Rechtsstaatlichkeitsdefiziten und demokratischen Rückschritten zu erleichtern. Die verschiedenen Beiträge untersuchen den verfassungsrechtlichen, rechtlichen und sozialen Rahmen des "Übergangs 2.0"
Artificial Intelligence and International Conflict in Cyberspace
This edited volume explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming international conflict in cyberspace. Over the past three decades, cyberspace developed into a crucial frontier and issue of international conflict. However, scholarly work on the relationship between AI and conflict in cyberspace has been produced along somewhat rigid disciplinary boundaries and an even more rigid sociotechnical divide – wherein technical and social scholarship are seldomly brought into a conversation. This is the first volume to address these themes through a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary approach. With the intent of exploring the question ‘what is at stake with the use of automation in international conflict in cyberspace through AI?’, the chapters in the volume focus on three broad themes, namely: (1) technical and operational, (2) strategic and geopolitical and (3) normative and legal. These also constitute the three parts in which the chapters of this volume are organised, although these thematic sections should not be considered as an analytical or a disciplinary demarcation
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Alternative Power: The Politics of Denmark\u27s Renewable Energy Transition
Global climate change is one of the defining political challenges and opportunities of the current era. Experts widely agree that technical means already exist for making the necessary transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; the obstacles to doing so are primarily political. Careful observers also recognize that this period of transition creates an opening for political innovation and development. How can the political will be generated to take action to prevent climate catastrophe? And what will the process of transitioning mean for the political systems that have been built on cheap and abundant oil? Political scientists have largely ignored technological development as a lever for political development, or feared that technology could only be a force of domination. Yet renewable energy enthusiasts have often seen democratizing potential in these technologies. What can be accomplished politically by building a wind turbine? As countries like Denmark accumulate decades of experience with renewable energy, it is becoming possible to give such questions close empirical consideration. Denmark generates more of its electricity from renewable sources, and has been doing so longer, than any other industrialized nation, making it a uniquely valuable case for studying an advanced renewable energy transition in progress. This dissertation draws on novel qualitative and quantitative data to present the first comprehensive history of Denmark’s energy transition from its roots in the 1970s until the present, aiming to explain how this tiny nation emerged as the world’s leading wind power producer, and assess whether this process has yielded any democratic dividends. The multi-method analysis sheds new light on internal dynamics of Denmark’s energy transition, and, more generally, on late-stage evolutionary processes in mature technological systems. Many studies have shown an interest in the Danish case, which is usually presented as a relatively unqualified success story, but few have provided the empirical resolution to identify these complicating factors. This dissertation employs an explanatory strategy adapted from the ecological sciences to construct a more holistic and integrative portrait, resulting in a more thorough and accurate account of how Denmark jumped out to such a significant lead in the energy transition, and why that momentum might be flagging today, with implications for other countries hoping to chart a path toward a sustainable future
Generative AI for Medical Imaging: extending the MONAI Framework
Recent advances in generative AI have brought incredible breakthroughs in
several areas, including medical imaging. These generative models have
tremendous potential not only to help safely share medical data via synthetic
datasets but also to perform an array of diverse applications, such as anomaly
detection, image-to-image translation, denoising, and MRI reconstruction.
However, due to the complexity of these models, their implementation and
reproducibility can be difficult. This complexity can hinder progress, act as a
use barrier, and dissuade the comparison of new methods with existing works. In
this study, we present MONAI Generative Models, a freely available open-source
platform that allows researchers and developers to easily train, evaluate, and
deploy generative models and related applications. Our platform reproduces
state-of-art studies in a standardised way involving different architectures
(such as diffusion models, autoregressive transformers, and GANs), and provides
pre-trained models for the community. We have implemented these models in a
generalisable fashion, illustrating that their results can be extended to 2D or
3D scenarios, including medical images with different modalities (like CT, MRI,
and X-Ray data) and from different anatomical areas. Finally, we adopt a
modular and extensible approach, ensuring long-term maintainability and the
extension of current applications for future features
Being WELL in the Neoliberal University: Conceptualising a Whole University Approach to Student Wellbeing and Experiences of Living and Learning at UK Universities in a Neoliberal Higher Education Context
Background
Epidemiological trends demonstrating disproportionate, proliferating, and unequal student and staff mental health outcomes at UK universities have coincided with a marked neoliberalisation of higher education. With few exceptions however, these trends have been conceptualised in isolation,
with epistemological predisposition towards isolated individual-level explanations and interventions for distress across student mental health research that are in inherent tension with the implementation of a whole university approach to wellbeing in policy and practice. To address these conceptual, methodological, and practice-based gaps across the field, this thesis seeks to address the primary research question: ‘how do students experience wellbeing and living and learning in a neoliberal higher educational context and what are the implications for the conceptualisation and operationalisation of a whole university approach?’
Design and Methods
Grounded in pragmatist ontology, a multi-phase research design is applied containing five symbiotic studies. Study one synthesises biopsychosocial systems-based theories of wellbeing; cross-disciplinary neoliberal critique; and
Foucaultian philosophy on subjectivity to conceptualise a multi-dimensional relationship between the neoliberal higher education system and student wellbeing. Study two conducts an integrative and interpretative narrative literature review to identify the social, academic, and financial determinants of student wellbeing within the context of the neoliberal higher education system. Study three utilises a cross-sectional survey with a national sample of 815 undergraduate and postgraduate students to identify the prevalence, variance, and associations of salient social, academic, and financial determinants of wellbeing with identifiable socio-material and socio-psychological neoliberal conditions. Study four performs ten student focus groups to explore student experiential narratives of wellbeing and living and learning in the neoliberal system, whilst eliciting recommendations for policy and practice. Study five uses expert interviews with nine relevant stakeholders to explore the influence of neoliberal socio-material and socio-psychological conditions on service delivery and elucidate recommendations for the conceptualisation and operationalisation of a whole university approach.
Findings
Taken together, the findings present preliminary evidence that identifiable neoliberal higher education principles and policies mediate student exposure, both socio-materially and socio-psychologically, to academic, social, and financial determinants which demonstrably, detrimentally, and differentially impact on subjective wellbeing. It is argued therefore that pragmatic conceptualisation and operationalisation of a whole university approach must be contextualised within the neoliberal higher education
system. Implications for policy, practice, and research are presented
Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity
Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century:
For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car,
from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad,
for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world?
How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations
in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication.
The authors and institutions come from all continents.
The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust!
The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors
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