Business, human rights and responsible innovation

We are increasingly governed and influenced by algorithms and predictive analysis.

The use by governments and businesses of artificial intelligence / machine learning (AI/ML) platforms can impact on human rights in myriad ways.

We have moved from debating whether governments need to regulate AI's potential discriminatory (etc.) effects, to questions of how best to do so in a legitimate, effective and coherent way: enabling innovation while protecting fundamental values and interests.

The nexus of 'new tech' and 'human rights' is presented as an emerging issue. Yet the rate of change and the implications of AI (etc.) across so many aspects of life suggest that it is only a regulatory consciousness that is still 'emerging'. All else is well underway.

Yes, we are far from the shallows now (as Lady Gaga / Bradley Cooper sing in A Star is Born (2018)): we are well in the deep waters now of how best to regulate for responsible innovation. And those deep waters are fast-moving ones, far faster than most regulatory and legal systems have moved.

This post relates to my hasty and under-cooked submission last week to the Australian Human Rights Commission / WEF 'White Paper' on 'AI and Human Rights: Leadership and Governance', itself related to a wider consultation (2018, ongoing).

One point made in that submission was a reflection on big tech firms' approach to the regulatory question. (This post is confined to that reflection -- the responsible innovation regulatory agenda is a far bigger and more complex one.)

The Commission's reports detail how influential CEOs -- from Microsoft to Amazon to Facebook -- are all now calling for or conceding the need for governmental regulatory frameworks on ethical AI / social impact / human rights (and these are not all the same thing, as my submission notes!).

These CEOs thus recognise the shift to the 'how' question, and are partly behind that shift, calling for regulation. Salesforce's CEO said at Davos last year that the role of governments and regulators was to come in and "point to True North".

Now most commentators have welcomed this. Like the Commission, they add this CEO's call to the chorus ('at least they are not resisting regulation' and 'business is inviting government to lead and steer'. A good thing).

Yet is it only me who finds something hugely troubling about this statement?

It is this. Is big tech so lacking in moral substance that it needs government to point out 'True North' (a set of general principles to guide AI design and use)? 'True North' is by definition universal and fairly easy to establish. Non-discrimination, user privacy, access to review and reasons for adverse decisions. These were basic societal values last time I looked at western democracies. They do not require governmental steer or compass reading for business. Get on with it, already.

Governments must lead the responsible innovation agenda, not least because their own use of AI is a key issue. Yet on the Salesforce CEO's statement, if industry cannot arrive at these values of its own accord, we truly are far from the shallows. As Lady Gaga sings, how will we remember ourselves this way -- before AI made life unrecognisable? 

Jo

Ps -- see an earlier blog here on 'big data' and human rights, and this one from November last year putting some of these themes into a short poem... !?

Business and Human Rights in Verse: Poem I

This is the first of 3 efforts to approach 'business and human rights' issues in another way. Poem 1 is entitled 'Big Data'; Poem 2 'Supply Chain' and Poem 3 'Extractive':

‘Dance the Guns to Silence’: some Business and Human Rights in verse

Dr Jolyon Ford

Associate Professor of Law, Australian National University

                                                                                                                                                November 2018

I.

Big Data

Auden felt it years ago,

His senses taut and pricked with light:

The gloom that gathers when we know

We cannot know truth, or wrong from right.

Aggregate my many selves,

Average out my patterned moves;

Analyze my weakest points,

Accept the truth that the Data proves.

You are more than just the sum

Of your coded self, something more

Than the image that the moment holds.

When this drops in and tells you things

You did not know about your life,

Remember that we yearned for this;

Accept the truth that the Profile tells;

Know that if blame is even worth it now,

In truth we did this to ourselves.

                                                                                                                                 Canberra, 10 October 2018

Data, big business and human rights

Data protection and privacy is among the most important and high-profile issues where 'business' and 'human rights' intersect.

Are some media-tech firms so large and influential that their social impact cannot be regulated? Or is the issue more about a sufficient constituency of public consumer-citizen demand for proper regulation?

This week saw news reports that Facebook may have 'improperly shared' the data of 87 million users with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, linked to the Trump presidential campaign.

In this post I simply paste below a paragraph from a forthcoming paper I have written on how these sorts of issues and crises are treated in popular culture. Hollywood may no longer be a credible barometer or bearer of moral messaging, and nor has it yet produced the definitive movie of our age in relation to our lives online. Still, from 1995's The Net to 2015's Ex­_Machina we do see some reflection of (Western) societies' anxieties and trajectories in relation to the commodification of data and privacy issues.

This is what the paragraph says:

"... One critic describes Ex­_Machina as one examination of ‘how corporations have been freed from all forms of social responsibility in the digital age’ (Allen 2016*). That is an overstatement, but Allen does observe that in movies of this sort the issue is not so much corporate access to one’s private life as the role that individual consumers (out of apathy, convenience, ignorance, trust or other factors) play in enabling corporations to ‘take on a life of their own’ and accumulate so much potential influence over private data. The significance of this movie (or more accurately this type of movie -- it was not a blockbuster) might lie in what it tells us about the mix of regulation vs. consumer preferences in this and other areas of corporate ethics and responsibility. After all, if informed consumers are not motivated to press home data-related human rights concerns in any concerted way, what are the prospects for influencing, expanding and sustaining corporate self-regulation or industry or state regulation to protect those same concerns?"

How does this relate to current debate on Facebook's data management?

Consumers do need to know and understand issues before they can be a constituency of demand for better regulatory interventions.

But social media and other technologies may be so convenient and/or seductive that if the balance of regulation on data privacy ends up not favouring the individual, it may not be that we are all the blameless victims of some elaborate corporate strategy to undermine human rights.

It may be that we have done this to ourselves.

Jo

* Allen, A., (2016) ‘How the ‘Evil Corporation’ Became a Pop-Culture Trope’ The Atlantic, 25 April 2016.

African dimensions of the Snowden saga: technologies of trust

The African growth and development story that gets the most airtime -- alongside sometimes misplaced hype about urbanisation and the 'rising middle class' -- is the proliferation of mobile telecoms (and gradual greater internet penetration).

 

The trend is not new now but the scope for innovative, cheap and wide-ranging platforms and services still excites for-profit outfits (telecoms, internet and consumer firms, and financial service providers), as well as policymakers interested in how expanding access to mobile technology and new media sources can help promote more reachable, responsive, and responsible government.

 

Some of the most exciting potential lies at the intersection of public and private sectors and interests: the significant scope in Africa for collaborative schemes and financing models that match corporate capital and dynamism with the policy authority and objectives of major public institutions -- think for example of the World Bank's work with Google Africa on deploying 'MapMaker' and community/crowdsourcing mapping technology in support of monitoring public services, political events, or humanitarian and disaster response efforts, and other partnerships on improving public access to government online data.  

 

Yet through mid-2013 discussion of the mobile/internet story in Africa has continued in isolation from the 'Snowden revelations' about the extent of US and other government agency access to private communications data, and the extent of corporate cooperation with security agencies in that process. Discussion of the pro-social impact of new technologies often lacks consideration of the down- or dark-sides to that, and the balance of interests in the user-provider-regulator triangle especially in those African countries where democratic space is constrained.

 

This week's blogpost is prompted by a brief line I spotted in the latest 'Zambia Weekly' letter alleging that the Zambian government had obtained a new ability to intercept email correspondence.

 

As noted in previous posts (see the three grouped here), new technologies merely provide a medium -- in a sense they are neutral as to the use made of them. Thus while pro-democracy activists welcome greater internet and mobile penetration and more repressive regimes generally dread it, the latter are also able to use such technologies to their advantage. In some cases, this will create dilemmas for consumer-facing telecoms firms operating in such settings in Africa, as the previous posts discuss.

 

Survey and anecdotal evidence suggests high levels of trust and goodwill among African consumers towards mobile phone companies (and the services they provide). This could prove an interesting 'social capital' resource for all sorts of initiatives. Yet, again, caution is needed in assuming that a greater technological imprint in governance or political processes in Africa will necessarily benefit pro-democracy forces, or necessarily engender public faith in electoral or other systems.

 

Greater proliferation of e-governance and i-politics has potential but will not necessarily mean intangible transfers of power to citizens over governments. Last week I returned from post-election Zimbabwe, where much controversy surrounded an Israeli-owned firm's role in managing the electronic voter's roll: some of our Africa experts at Oxford Analytica have examined the impact of new e-registration and e-voting technologies, explaining to clients how these may not necessarily win the confidence of voters nor improve electoral integrity. Indeed they might have precisely the opposite effect.

 

There is more work to be done exploring the extent and potential utility of public trust in telecoms service providers in Africa and their relations with host governments (see a previous related post here). 

Jo
 

ps - the public's trust was a key theme of Oxford Analytica's most recent (Edition 2) free quarterly 'Business and Society Monitor' (available here) which discusses the work of in-house experts who have been following and explaining the global industry and governance implications of the Snowden/NSA issue.

Mobiles, media, and mass messaging in African politics

Within wider debates on the private sector's role in providing, protecting or respecting public goods such as safety and security, non-state media can have special responsibilities.

 

Last week I began preparing notes for a part in the EU Eurojust programme's network on genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, whose next meeting will consider the jurisprudence and practicalities around the potential liability of business entities and owners for complicity in, contribution to, or commission of the most grave international crimes.

 

Most attention focuses on classic scenarios such as a firm that provides lethal gas used in a death camp (IG Farben company's Zyklon-B gas in Nazi Germany). Colonial and post-colonial Africa yield some examples albeit ones that mainly have a less obvious chain of causation or imputed intention to profit from crimes against humanity.

 

The role of the media and telecoms sectors is less often considered, although a notable African exception is the role of a privately-owned local radio station in broadcasting hate-speech and incitement in Rwanda in the lead-up to that country's 1994 genocide. More recently, this year's Kenya elections witnessed a wave of efforts to prevent a repeat of the inflammatory private broadcasts and publications that occurred around the 2007-8 election-related serious ethnic violence. Across West Africa in the last decade, a flowering of non-state newspapers and talk-back radio has fuelled greater free political communication but has also witnessed private media houses acting as platforms for ethnic baiting and stereotyping of a sort that can have very serious consequences.

 

Such situations call for state regulation of private media self-regulation to constrain the production of harmful content well before it constitutes or contributes to the sort of conduct that raises the interest of prosecutors in The Hague. The inherent limits on freedom of expression and the normative weight of prohibitions on incitement to grave crimes mean that such situations raise merely obvious duties -- and not really any dilemmas -- for private media or telecoms outfits (although on-line self-publication raises particular challenges for internet service provider firms).

 

A somewhat different situation for media and telecoms firms around Africa involves not mass crimes or their precursors but the many ways in which commercial provision of communications services comes head to head with electoral or protest politics, mundane or menacing. It is where the pressure for self-censorship or altered operations comes from the state bureaucracy in a context where democratic principles and public order are both potentially directly at stake.

 

It is one thing if a valid law requires, for example, that in the interests of public order a private mobile phone service provider not enable political parties to send mass multi-recipient text (SMS) messages around election time. The issue becomes whether that law is reasonable and of general, impartial application. If not (for instance, if used by the state to suppress the voice of its political opposition or to monitor its communications), the telecoms company may need to make difficult calculations, including balancing its relationship with the government with its reputation or its principals' own principles.

 

In many cases, there may be no formal regulatory basis for state officials to request phone, media or social media firms to constrain their output or their customers' usage. Instead, implicit in such requests is a threat, for instance of non-renewal of broadcast or service provider licences in future. Where politics and business intersect in hard cases, it is far easier for armchair commentators to counsel firms to take a path of principled pragmatism than to have to actually walk it.

 

This week sees controversial elections in Zimbabwe to end the 2008-9 power-sharing arrangement. Homegrown independent mobile phone firm Econet has come under considerable pressure to agree to block mass SMS-sending by organisational users. Ostensibly, the request is premised on a need to preserve public order (Kenya took similar steps ahead of its 2013 election). Some argue that the net effect in the Zimbabwe / Econet case will be to favour one party over another. The firm has reportedly and perhaps understandably obliged.

 

Indeed, these Zimbabwe elections are showcasing more generally the evolving role of mobile and internet (and mobile internet) technologies in African electoral politics -- even if the vast majority of voters across the continent still appear to rely on radio for the bulk of their political self-education.

 

In addition to traditional media (a new private independent TV station recently began broadcasting into Zimbabwe from South Africa, via satellite), the country is experiencing new phenomena such as the 'Baba Jukwa' Facebook character who purports to disclose, from within the ruling party, its many intrigues; Google Africa has launched a one-stop Zimbabwe election hub site collating news and other stories; website votewatch263.org is attempting to mimic Kenyan 'crowdsourcing' experiences by providing a space for individuals to report issues related to the conduct of campaigning and voting; the Econet SMS measure is a first for the country even if state monitoring of communications there is not.

 

Democratic aspirations and political competition will continue to stimulate innovation in the use of mobile and internet technologies across the continent -- sometimes the innovation will come from pro-democracy groups, and sometimes from incumbent regimes (or indeed rebel or other armed groups who in Africa have taken a strong liking to platforms like Twitter).

 

By choice or circumstance, private sector providers will put or find themselves at the heart of this trend.

 

Jo

 

'Corporate foreign policy': phones and filters, norms and no-go's

Corporate or investor reputation is not only based on values but on how consistently they are applied.

In a networked, info-sharing world, this creates potential reputational (and operational) vulnerabilities for firms or financiers involved or interested across countries with varying democratic, human rights and governance/transparency standards.

The notion of multinational firms needing a 'corporate foreign policy' is strongly tied to the recognition that such firms may need a coherent and clear principled position on acute or chronic serious socio-political issues arising in particular countries of operation.

Beneath modern corporate responsibility frameworks is the tendency towards a normative assumption (or at least aspiration) that a firm's policies on social and governance issues are universal -- applicable wherever the firm operates; yet implicit in operating (and, especially, competing) across jurisdictions is the sense of a need for flexibility especially where engaging in situations where political space is more constrained and austere. (EU human rights law in other contexts refers to a 'margin of appreciation' afforded, there to states, in their local interpretation and application of norms).

It is easy to see that compromises reached in some places may expose a firm to allegations, back home, of laxity in upholding human rights or other standards -- while attempts (or perceived attempts) to promote certain values in a host country may expose a firm to awkward government relations. In hard cases, and faced with competitors for whom reputational risk is far less relevant, firms will think hard before risking their license to operate for the sake of bolstering their (global or local) 'social' license to operate -- even if in the much longer term it is conceivable that a principled stance on a country or issue may improve their strategic business position.

Three coming events prompt this re-visit to the 'corporate foreign policy' (CFP) question. First -- this week -- is a talk on the topic at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs by my colleague Dr Stephanie Hare. Second -- next month -- is another talk here in the UK. (The former promises to deal with issues such as the consistency question; the invitation for the latter seems to explain CFP as little more than 'do try harder to understand the nuances of your host country'...)

The third event -- which ties these CFP thoughts to the sub-Saharan African settings that I follow -- is one I am attending, this week's Ernst & Young 'Growing Beyond Borders' Strategic Growth Forum, in South Africa.

Two large African countries that I do not expect attendees to ask or talk about much are Sudan and Ethiopia. This is despite their objective importance and the attention such African investment and business talks give to demographic factors as elements of frontier market attractiveness (Ethiopia has over 80 million people, Sudan over 30 million; Addis Ababa and the Khartoum-Omdurman conurbation are major African cities). At least among Western investors, there is little interest in either country in the consumer-facing sectors -- such as telecommunications -- so captivating investors elsewhere on the continent. Despite both having governments that strongly constrain free political activity, the two are not analogous -- Sudan is still subject to US economic sanctions, whereas Ethiopia is a key Western strategic ally in the region and something of a donor 'darling'. The countries' respective images are such that the CFP (reputational) implications of investing in Ethiopia are considerably less than those relating to Sudan.

Ethiopia's mobile phone and internet penetration rate is well below the east African average -- like other strategic sectors, activity is restricted to certain local elites and entities, while its authorities actively monitor and filter local telecomms and internet usage. As Dr Hare has noted, CFP concerns are often at their sharpest around cases where global firms with universalist brand aspirations are prevailed upon by less democratic authorities to restrict user services, for example in cases of domestic political (pro-democracy) crisis. Ethiopia is unlikely rapidly to liberalise (in a commercial sense) its telecomms sector; but should it begin to embark -- in the aftermath of the death of long-standing ruler Meles Zenawi -- on a new era of opening up some sectors of its tightly-controlled economy to foreign firms, new entrants will need to ask whether the degree of continued state interest in users' content, or the political stance of local partners, are compatible with any universalist aspirations or commitments that the foreign firm may have.

Firms have to do their own filtering if they are to decide their value stance, reputational or regulatory exposure, and how pragmatic they will be in trading-off certain principles and preferences.

The global and sector-specific normative framework is still evolving for responsible business conduct in cases of value-challenging political and economic governance dilemmas. Under varying (but arguably growing) degrees of public or regulatory scrutiny, firms and funds are deciding their own filter-gauge and normative threshold for what constitutes an acceptable set of choices and actions when confronted by value-laden dilemmas about their operations.

As I've argued before, the 'CFP' label can mask that these issues are not entirely new (think, for instance, of apartheid divestment campaigns and decisions). They are nevertheless one more issue on the risk dashboard when contemplating country entry, expansion or exit; where a country's political space is opening up, holding the promise of first-mover or hope-signaller advantage, it is one issue on the 'opportunities' dashboard corresponding to risk calculations.

Jo

See the most recent post on related issues (corporations and principled engagement in 'pariah' states, with links to other previous posts on CFP and on corporate 'nationalism') -- here.

CFP is distinguishable from -- but closely related to -- topics such as the use or attempted use states make of activity abroad by their corporate nationals for official foreign policy purposes and to defend or promote the national interest (private or state-owned corporations as witting or unwitting agents of state foreign policy).

Public policy, private leadership and social media

Does leadership always involve decisive overt action? When does good leadership by a firm on a issue of significant public interest suggest one stands back rather than steps forward?

We have just ended our annual 'Global Horizons' conference, where one of the most interesting panels looked at leadership -- and the communication dimensions of this -- in a 'wired world'.

Debate included not just social media as a tool of (and something impacting) states' foreign policy, but also the policy of social media firms in dealing with states using their platforms in this way, with censorship / self-censorship on content that affects public policy issues like security or human rights, or firms' policies in designing applications intended to promote popular participation in governance and accountability.

(The recent reaction to a Youtube video deemed offensive to Islam has of course given further impetus to these debates, discussed previously -- here).

The panel at our conference spoke about the risks and limitations of social media platforms, but tended largely to adopt the view that leaders (from whatever sector) who did not use Twitter and other tools risked losing the initiative. Nature abhors a vacuum, went this argument, and if one doesn't fill it with one's position, others could distort or swamp that position.

However, it strikes me that there will be cases where leadership by a private sector executive (or group of them) on an issue that has spiked in public importance might sometimes involve saying less, not more.

That is, contrary to the idea that leaders should 'not just stand there, but do something!', might there not be circumstances where the better position is 'don't just do something, stand there'...?

What do I mean?

I was running the Africa discussion group where some participants were interested in discussing South Africa's recent mining sector unrest. One issue that corporate leaders continue to grapple with in that country is how far and when to raise their head (singly or as an industry) 'above the parapet' on hotly-debated, highly-politicised issues.

I don't purport to have any particular insight or experience on the tricky question of how CEOs of big mining firms should show leadership on issues that appear to rise above labour relations and become part of national debates about livelihoods, access to essential services, free expression and so on. Business leaders played a central role in facilitating government-ANC negotiations that led to the end of apartheid and democratic elections -- how's that for 'private sector, public world' -- but this was principally a behind-the-scenes role. The mining (and wider business community) in South Africa has been internally divided on the utility of entering public debates on issues such as proposed mines nationalisation in that country.

There is a role for business leadership on public policy issues in Africa, especially (as my last post intimated) where governments are unable or unwilling to address, for example, social issues that perpetuate injustice (and might potentially disrupt business activity). Indeed, I can imagine writing many a post decrying the lack of private sector leadership on some issues. Moreover, CEOs are often entitled and probably well advised to put their side of a story that has entered the public domain in an acute or serious way.

However, I can envisage many circumstances where 'leadership' by corporate actors involves saying less, not more, on an ongoing issue.

The main issue in corporate leaders speaking out on public debates -- whether through loudhailer or Twitter -- will be credibility.

If that is so, most of the leadership that firms could show might amount to deeds, not words. So while big business in African settings may need to ensure its contributions and constraints are better appreciated in the wider community, I do not think this necessarily means an over-active media profile on hot, hard case debates. Often it may be more appropriate -- and safer for firms -- that officials lead on politicised policy issues.

I think of these lines in Rudyard Kipling's great poem on leadership, 'If':

'If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ...

... And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise...'

Talking too wise can have difficult consequences for firms grappling public policy dilemmas (some social media platforms may not be amenable to wise talk ... ).

In the regions I cover, credibility will remain at a premium in the content of CEO communications -- whatever their medium -- on issues at the intersection of business, politics and society.

Jo