Space station needs, attributes, and architectural options: Space station program cost analysis

This report documents the principal cost results (Task 3) derived from the Space Station Needs, Attributes, and Architectural Options study conducted for NASA by the McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company. The determined costs were those of Architectural Options (Task 2) defined to satisfy Mission Requirements (Task 1) developed within the study. A major feature of this part of the study was the consideration of realistic NASA budget constraints on the recommended architecture. Thus, the space station funding requirements were adjusted by altering schedules until they were consistent with current NASA budget trends

The Internet’s Town Square? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Parler’s “Past Imaginary”

The discursive construction of sociotechnical imaginaries by the leaders of platform companies can help legitimate their platforms, shaping how they are perceived and ultimately regulated. Scholars have identified the construction of “future imaginaries” by large platform companies such as Meta—but do smaller platforms also seek to construct imaginaries, and if so, what form do they take? In this article we undertake a critical discourse analysis of statements by John Matze, co-founder and CEO of the fringe social media platform Parler, that garnered media coverage in 2020. Parler gained significant popularity among US right-wing users during 2020, before it was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores in January 2021 following the riot at the US Capitol. Using Van Leeuwen’s framework for discursive legitimation, we analyze a curated dataset of 186 news articles to identify the legitimating themes that Matze invoked in media coverage of Parler in 2020. We find that Matze foregrounded free expression, and with it the vision of Parler as a “town square,” which can be seen as an attempt to legitimate the fledgling platform. However, this discursive legitimation must be understood in the context of Parler’s base of predominantly US right-wing users, many of whom turned to Parler because of the perceived “bias” and “censorship” of mainstream platforms. We argue that, in contrast to the future imaginaries constructed for large platform companies such as Meta, Matze’s discursive strategy constructed an imaginary that was fundamentally retrograde. Parler’s “past imaginary” resembles efforts by far-right groups to justify and legitimate hate speech in increasingly platformized societies

Achieving a ‘Good AI Society’: Comparing the Aims and Progress of the EU and the US

Copyright . Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) strategies, released by governments around the world, that seek to maximise the benefits of AI and minimise potential harms. This article provides a comparative analysis of the European Union (EU) and the United States’ (US) AI strategies and considers (i) the visions of a ‘Good AI Society’ that are forwarded in key policy documents and their opportunity costs, (ii) the extent to which the implementation of each vision is living up to stated aims and (iii) the consequences that these differing visions of a ‘Good AI Society’ have for transatlantic cooperation. The article concludes by comparing the ethical desirability of each vision and identifies areas where the EU, and especially the US, need to improve in order to achieve ethical outcomes and deepen cooperation

Prolegomena to a white paper on an ethical framework for a good AI Society

That AI will have a major impact on society is no longer in question. Current debate turns instead on how far this impact will be positive or negative, for whom, in which ways, in which places, and on what timescale. In order to frame these questions in a more substantive way, in this prolegomena we introduce what we consider the four core opportunities for society offered by the use of AI, four associated risks which could emerge from its overuse or misuse, and the opportunity costs associated with its under use. We then offer a high-level view of the emerging advantages for organisations of taking an ethical approach to developing and deploying AI. Finally, we introduce a set of five principles which should guide the development and deployment of AI technologies. The development of laws, policies and best practices for seizing the opportunities and minimizing the risks posed by AI technologies would benefit from building on ethical frameworks such as the one offered here

Prolegomena to a white paper on an ethical framework for a good AI Society

That AI will have a major impact on society is no longer in question. Current debate turns instead on how far this impact will be positive or negative, for whom, in which ways, in which places, and on what timescale. In order to frame these questions in a more substantive way, in this prolegomena we introduce what we consider the four core opportunities for society offered by the use of AI, four associated risks which could emerge from its overuse or misuse, and the opportunity costs associated with its under use. We then offer a high-level view of the emerging advantages for organisations of taking an ethical approach to developing and deploying AI. Finally, we introduce a set of five principles which should guide the development and deployment of AI technologies. The development of laws, policies and best practices for seizing the opportunities and minimizing the risks posed by AI technologies would benefit from building on ethical frameworks such as the one offered here

The net as a knowledge machine: How the internet became embedded in research

In this paper, we examine the growth of the Internet as a research topic across the disciplines, and the embedding of the Internet into the very fabric of research. While this is a trend that ‘everyone knows,’ prior to this study no work had quantified the extent to which this common sense knowledge was true, or how the embedding actually took place. Using scientometric data extracted from Scopus, we explore how the Internet has become a powerful knowledge machine which forms part of the scientific infrastructure across not just technology fields, but also right across the social sciences, sciences, and humanities

Big Data and Positive Change in the Developing World

This paper is the product of a workshop that brought together practitioners, researchers, and data experts to discuss how big data is becoming a resource for positive social change in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs). We include in our definition of big data sources such as social media data, mobile phone use records, digitally mediated transactions, online news media sources, and administrative records. We argue that there are four main areas where big data has potential for promoting positive social change: advocacy; analysis and prediction; facilitating information exchange; and promoting accountability and transparency. These areas all have particular challenges and possibilities, but there are also issues shared across them, such as open data and privacy concerns. Big data is shaping up to be one of the key battlefields of our time, and the paper argues that this is therefore an opportune moment for civil society groups in particular to become a larger part of the conversation about the use of big data, since questions about the asymmetries of power involved are especially urgent in these uses in LMICs. Civil society groups are also currently underrepresented in debates about privacy and the rights of technology users, which are dominated by corporations, governments and nongovernmental organizations in the Global North. We conclude by offering some lessons drawn from a number of case studies that represent the current state‐of‐the‐art