The Intelligent Toolbox

In response to the disinformation crisis, new policies, practices, and regulations will need corresponding practical technology solutions. This paper outlines five key functions that technology can serve: measure and track offline harms from online information, enable responsible algorithm design and review, label content, throttle the spread of harmful content, and track-and-trace online disinformation to its sources. Fortunately, many of the tools are available and in use. However, they need to be integrated into a holistic system that begins with recognizing disinformation and...

The San Francisco Bay Area encompassing Silicon Valley is arguably the most important region in the world for the application of digital technologies to social and economic life. Martin Kenney and John Zysman (2016) have argued that a new economy based on digital platforms is emerging and Bay Area firms are at the center of this development. The current conjuncture is the result of a set of historical forces, some of which are very local and others of which are global and national. The region is the result of an intensely local process even as its firms, entrepreneurs and markets are...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses interwoven challenges. Defined as technology that uses advanced computation to perform at human cognitive capacity in some task area, AI must be regulated in the context of its broader toolbox - algorithms, data and platforms - and its regulation must be sector-specific. Establishing national and community priorities on how to reap AI’s benefits, while managing its social and economic risks, is an evolving debate. Digital Platform Firms are a fundamental driver of AI tools: they dominate the playing field and often pursue priorities outside the frames of...

Will the digital revolution, and its current manifestation in Cloud computing and platform-based work, inexorably lead to the elimination of jobs and work due to automation. Are new opportunities for work opening? Should we be thinking in terms of conventional work or is value creation the key? Certainly, nearly all firms are experiencing intense competition leading to commoditization based principally upon price. In the first section of this paper, we explore the pathways opened as cloud computing, transforms the way both goods and services are innovated, produced, and distributed....