AI in Government: unpacking approaches and issues by Rony Medaglia of Copenhagen Business School

1. Artificial Intelligence in
Government
Unpacking Approaches and
Issues
Rony Medaglia
14 July 2020
Samos Summit on ICT-enabled Governance

2. Rony Medaglia
rony@cbs.dk
• Associate Professor, Department of Digitalization,
Copenhagen Business School
• Advisor to the EU Commission AI WATCH initiative
for the Analysis of the Use & Impact of AI in Public
Services
• President of the Special Interest Group of E-
Government (SIG-eGov) of the Association for
Information Systems (AIS)
About me

3. • Relieving public servants from
repetitive tasks
• Improving public service accuracy
• Reduce corruption of case workers
Potential benefits of AI in government
Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Ismagilova, E., Aarts, G., Coombs, C., Crick, T., … Williams, M. D. (2019).
Artificial Intelligence (AI): Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and
agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.08.002

4. Potential risks of AI in government
Bias and discrimination

5. Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Ismagilova, E., Aarts, G., Coombs, C.,
Crick, T., … Williams, M. D. (2019). Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities,
and agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of
Information Management.
Potential risks of AI in government
Bias and discrimination

6. Potential risks of AI in government
Lack of explainability
Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Ismagilova, E., Aarts, G., Coombs, C.,
Crick, T., … Williams, M. D. (2019). Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities,
and agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of
Information Management.

7. EU Commission White Paper on AI
Three overlooked issues

8. Overlooked issue 1
Edge computing vs
data economies of scale
• Today, 80% of data processing takes
place in centralized cloud data
centres, and 20% in smart connected
objects
• Tomorrow 20/80?
• …but AI algorithm training requires
large datasets

9. Overlooked issue 2
Privacy-as-confidentiality vs
privacy as protection from manipulation
• GDPR strong on privacy-as-
confidentiality of personal contents
(e.g., data anonymization)
• …but corporations don’t need access to
personal content to perform profiling and
powerful nudging

10. Overlooked issue 3
AI-powered filter bubbles
Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Ismagilova, E., Aarts, G., Coombs, C.,
Crick, T., … Williams, M. D. (2019). Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities,
and agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of
Information Management.

11. Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Ismagilova, E., Aarts, G., Coombs, C.,
Crick, T., … Williams, M. D. (2019). Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities,
and agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of
Information Management.
Overlooked issue 3
AI-powered filter bubbles

12. Potential benefits
1. Relieving public servants from repetitive tasks
2. Improving public service accuracy
3. Avoiding corruption of case workers
Overlooked issues
1. Edge computing vs data economies of scale
2. Privacy-as-confidentiality vs
privacy as protection from manipulation
3. AI-powered filter bubbles
Artificial Intelligence in government
Summary