IDENTITY VALLEY NEWSLETTER #1

Dear Friends of Identity Valley,

We are thrilled to present the very first edition of our newsletter, a bi-monthly publication dedicated to looking at the ever-evolving landscape of digital tech through a human-centred lens and building a community of like-minded people along the way. For those who don’t know us yet: We are Identity Valley, a non-profit organisation, calling for more Digital Responsibility.

The purpose of this newsletter is to cut through the noise of the tech marketing hype and put a spotlight on the tangible impacts of the digitalisation on individuals and communities. In upcoming editions we’ll delve into the fault lines of our increasingly digital lives, from algorithmic bias to the erosion of human autonomy. But we also aim to celebrate the positive contributions of digital technologies, showcasing stories of innovation and empowerment.

In each issue of our newsletter, you can expect a deep dive on a specific development in tech that has captured our attention, recommendations on insightful tech stories, and updates on how to get involved through events, workshops, or other forms of engagement.

As we embark on this journey together, we invite you to join the conversation. Whether you're a technologist, a policymaker, an entrepreneur, or simply a curious observer, your perspectives and experiences are important in shaping our collective understanding of a more human-centric digital world.

Warm regards,

Jutta Juliane Meier and the IDV team

What we are reading 

• Overwhelmed by all the talk about LLMs, GenAI and the AI Act? Prof. Joanna Bryson has you covered in this 2024 BRIEF overview on LLM answering some questions about the usefulness, accuracy and regulation of current AI “foundation models”.
  

• While Europe is, in many regards, a step ahead in confronting potentially harmful digital technologies (e.g. AI Act) and faces different challenges than US society, the concept of public interest technology discussed in the essay “Deprogramming Implicit Bias: The Case for Public Interest Technology” is something also Europe should have a look at.
  

• The European Policy Center (EPC) had a look at AI and the future of work. The good news: While GenAI already has an impact on medium-skilled white-collar work, the scale of the impact remains limited. In the medium-term, however, they warn of a rapid growth of the gig economy with its loose social protections due to an uptake in AI-augmented jobs. Recommendation: EU needs to look more into the long-term societal implications of AI.
  

• The Feral Mind Of Artificial Intelligence (Noema) is a fascinating long-read on the question if LLMs can develop something we might call consciousness. While the topic has been tackled many times over this essay stands out because of its deep dive on the importance of human language for reasoning about the physical world and its lack of sensationalism on the question of “AI sentience”.
  

• Finally, a recommendation for the Digital Food Podcast, a podcast on how digital technologies are revolutionising the food industry and how this impacts consumers. This is part of the research project DRG4FOOD that Identity Valley is contributing its expertise on human-centred digitalisation to.
  

>This month’s hidden gem of the internet<

“Habsburg AI – a system that is so heavily trained on the outputs of other generative AI's that it becomes an inbred mutant, likely with exaggerated, grotesque features.” (@jathansadowski via X)

How to contribute 

Register for our event "From Bytes to Rights" Donate and support Identity Valley Research

Our event recommendations

• March 26th, 2024, Berlin
  Weizenbaum Institut - The Equality Machine – Book Presentation and Discussion

• April 15th, 2024, Brussels
  Identity Valley - From Bytes to Rights

• April 16th, 2024, Brussels 
  POLITICO - POLITICO Tech & AI Summit

• April 22nd-24th, 2024, Cologne
  Certified Senders Association
  CSA E-MAIL Summit 2024 - Trust fuels the future

• April 29th - 30th, 2024, Munich
  The 48FORWARD FESTIVAL – DEBATING POSSIBLE FUTURES