Digital Global Observatories

How Advanced Computing can help shaping our common future in times of increasing uncertainty and unsettled lives?

6th Gago Conference on European Science Policy

A joint organization of Ciencia Viva and Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), with the special patronnage of The Spannish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2023 and the European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel (tbc).0

Barcelona , 23-24 October, 2023

Background

The analysis clearly shows that every forecast for world societies in the coming decades will be strongly affected by the emerging trends on the increasing digitalization of our communities and economies ¹ . This includes the increasing world relevance of the Global South and the critically relevant role of Europe-Latin America cooperation, as well as that with Africa.

Although the advantages and disadvantages of digital observation and governance based on centralized and decentralized digital networks are still subject to many uncertainties requiring comprehensive technical and policy debates, the use of advanced computing and decentralization and blockchain control is only partially immune to biases. Blockchain algorithms incentivize and ultimately give preference to participants that have access to more nodes, therefore, to the most active ones. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help by modelling the information flows and learning different participants' critical patterns of use. Such practices can then provide input to set the parameters that govern the behaviour of blockchain algorithms.

However, the massified use of AI-enabled innovations is also not free of additional questions because the "power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts reduces our agency over the future". In predicting our behaviour, AI systems can end up changing it. Consequently, collective human wisdom needs to be strengthened so that emerging regulatory issues for an increasing digital age should help promote critical approaches to AI, with clear accountability and clarity about boundaries and purpose, as well as responsibility. ³ It requires rethinking of the techno-centric narrative of progress, embracing and harnessing uncertainty, as well as abandoning the fantasy of control over nature and the illusion of techno-centric dominance of AI-enabled innovations.

The issue is clear in that it creates tensions between developers/promoters and human-led policy making, which need to be informed by negotiations of trade-offs. Above all, it requires a transdisciplinary approach to collective behaviours and consideration of "human agency" across economics, philosophy, law, science and technology studies, history and sociology to engage with all the necessary ingredients of an emerging decentralized digital age and AI-enabled innovations.

In other words and following Helga Novotny (2021), digital observation and governance should be oriented to promote "digital humanism" and guarantee a transdisciplinary approach to collective behaviours and consideration of "human agency".

The rationale for this discussion also relies on the fact that the climate crisis is probably the biggest challenge humanity is facing. Its effects in the field of health led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare that "the climate crisis threatens to annihilate the progress of the last 50 years in global health and poverty reduction. Further, it widened the inequalities in health that exist between and within different populations". It recognized that "climate change is the greatest global threat to human health. The Paris Agreement is perhaps the most impactful health agreement of the 21st century" (WHO, 2021); however, there is no sustainable development without guaranteeing the rights of all people. Future actions must take into account the connection between the "ecological footprint" indicators and those associated with the "social footprint" (i.e., poverty, inequality, and violation of basic rights).

The latter means changing and developing green/blue economies and healthier societies. It means changing our daily routines and work habits, as well as our cities, transport, agriculture, and industry, in a way achieving a balance between the carbon emitted into the atmosphere and the carbon removed from it. This balance – or net zero – will happen when the amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere is no more than the amount removed.

For this change to happen and be facilitated by digital observation and governance, we need to understand better "human agency" and our emerging collective behaviours to guarantee the sustainability of the populations, simultaneously with their right to develop. And this requires the governance of complex and massive amounts of data and their synergies (i.e., "data ecologies"), including new satellite-based data, together with the necessary knowledge and innovation to improve land use management. Large amounts of data require new technological tools such as cloud computing, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and machine learning for handling, processing, understanding and exploitation, together with new in situ information systems and the knowledge and innovation needed to improve land use management and the development of sustainable and healthy territories. We argue that all this requires a revised "digital humanism" and a rethinking of techno-centric narratives of progress, embracing and harnessing uncertainty and abandoning the fantasy of control over nature and the illusion of techno-centric dominance of digital systems and AI-enable innovations.

Understanding knowledge as our common public good will allow citizens to be an integral and key stakeholders in future developments. The latter will help policymakers better understand how decentralized digital networks and AI can be used to develop further to make public services more effective by delivering seamless services, cutting down digital bureaucracy and giving citizens back their most precious asset, namely their time. In addition, it will drive new policy options to enhance the governance and regulation of decentralized digital networks, including those in the public sector, ensuring high standards of conduct across all areas of public sector practice, promoting public sector effectiveness and delivering better service to its users.

These challenges and associated risks will possibly be mitigated in implementations using practices, methods and tools generated by a new trend in research and innovation: that of "Responsible AI", underscoring principles such as fairness, transparency and explainability, human-centeredness, privacy and security.

Considering this context, the Conference will focus on the following issues:

Emerging developments and challenges in digital observatories and advanced computing:

• Challenges for green and efficient advanced computing;

• Digital humanism; ethical and responsible computing; responsible AI;

• Digital observatories, digital twins and skill development: users, developers and promoters;

• Transdisciplinary approaches to collective behaviors: governance of data ecologies;

• Potential markets for digital twins: public and semi-public goods versus proprietary knowledge;

Application areas and policy implications:

• Disease observatories: advanced computing and digital twins of public health, the concept of "One Health";

• Urban observatories: digital twins of complex and vulnerable urban contexts, including the most vulnerable in the Global South;

• Forest observatories: digital twins of forest and remote areas, oriented to sustainable land use management, with an emphasis in Africa and Latin America, including in Amazonia and the other tropical biomes;

• Ocean/water observatories: digital twins of the ocean and rivers, oriented to sustainable blue economies, including in the Atlantic; North-South/South-North cooperation.