This issue explores how Switzerland’s deeply trusted democratic system is being challenged by digitalisation, from signature collection scandals to the razor-thin vote on the federal e-ID. Through expert interviews with Andrzej Nowak (SICPA) and Imad Aad (C4DT), the publication examines the tensions between speed and trust, technology and legitimacy, and asks how digital tools can strengthen — rather than undermine — democratic participation in an era of deepfakes, platform power, and growing scepticism.
We are delighted to announce that 2 additional start-ups have joined the C4DT community through the C4DT start-up program. For two years Dtangle and Hafnova will complement the already diverse group of partner companies through their start-up perspectives to collaborate and share insights on trust-building technologies. Their agility and innovation capacity have permitted these start-ups (…)
EPFL researchers have developed new software – now spun-off into a start-up – that eliminates the need for data to be sent to third-party cloud services when AI is used to complete a task. This could challenge the business model of Big Tech.
Cyber-threats have been accelerating due to the exponential growth of network connectivity. These new capabilities provide myriad opportunities for security hackers to wreak significant damage for commercial, political, or other gains.
It seems that LLMs are hitting a wall where new models don’t improve capabilities anymore. At the same time, attacks and cautious tales of what is wrong with current models increase and make us weary of using them without enough supervision. In fact, little is known about all the quirks these models have when they (…)
While protecting citizens is crucial, this VPN ban proposal exemplifies the consequences of non-technical politicians legislating technology. The goal of child safety is valid, but the proposed measures are technically impossible and would harm businesses, students and vulnerable groups. To avoid such issues, impact assessments and structured dialogue between IT experts and lawmakers should be (…)
This thought-provoking article challenges the rationale behind the increased integration of large language models (LLMs) into our daily workflows. Is it the result of a thorough risk-benefit analysis, or rather because of us steadily normalising the inherent problems of these systems to the point of becoming complacent to their potentially disastrous consequences?
Although the target audience of this legal analysis from noyb of the European Commission’s ‘Digital Omnibus’ proposal is clearly lawyers, it still gives the layperson a good overview of the proposed changes to the GDPR and their practical implications.
Leading IT projects is a very difficult task, and the difficulty only increases with the size of the project. Sometimes it feels like most of the failures involve government projects, but this article also presents business cases that went awry. There is a lot of evidence on how to do better; unfortunately this requires competent (…)
AI is often anthropomorphized, with terms like ‘hallucinations’ having entered technical jargon. All the more striking that when the capabilities of popular models today are discussed, ‘intelligence’ is reduced to one set of benchmarks or another, but seldom considered in a holistic way. I liked this article for putting the human, and not the machine, (…)
Improvements in agentic AI and increasing competency of hackers are driving more sophisticated cyber attacks, from mere AI-augmented intrusions to ever more autonomous operations. While this is deeply concerning, such efforts can only succeed when infrastructure is vulnerable. Investing in the cybersecurity of our infrastructures has never been more pressing.
Software developers and users share vulnerability information through standardized formats and processes (e.g., CVEs) to alert affected parties. Users can check their Software Bills of Materials to identify and fix vulnerabilities. I wonder whether the same will eventually happen with governance vulnerabilities such as this one. How can affected parties be notified of such trust (…)
In this paper, Mélanie Kolbe-Guyot, Head of Data Governance and Compliance at Statistisches Amt Basel-Stadt, and formerly C4DT’s Head of Policy, examines the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in Swiss public administration and provides recommendations for its responsible, trustworthy and effective use.
Last month’s outage of Amazon’s AWS US-East-1 barely became yesterday’s news when another outage, this time chez Cloudflare, took down major parts of the internet again. Not only do these incidents show just how brittle the Internet’s underlying infrastructure is becoming, they also serve as a stark reminder of how much it relies on only (…)
Cet article d’AlgorithmWatch/CH est très intéressant non seulement parce qu’il détaille la consommation de ressources des centres de données, mais aussi parce qu’il essaie de présenter le thématique sous tous ses angles. La conclusion est cependant explicite: dans ce secteur aussi, la politique ne s’intéresse qu’aux développements, et par conséquent la population doit se défendre (…)
Are LLMs helping discover new bugs, or are they merely making the life of Open Source developers more difficult? Currently it looks more like the latter, with many Open Source projects being overwhelmed by bad quality bug reports created automatically by LLMs. This is a problem that won’t go away quickly, and adding a fix (…)
The number of AI-generated images of child sex abuses is rapidly increasing. But thanks to a new UK law, tech companies and child safety agencies are joining forces and being given legal testing permission, allowing experts or audit models to proactively screen for CSAM risk rather than wait for illegal content to appear. The law (…)
A love letter to the craft, this article is a reminder that it is by combining human expertise and GenAI that we can truly harness the potential of these tools.
Although written from the point of view of the U.S. healthcare system, quite a few of the issues raised in this essay are universal. I appreciated this in-depth discussion of the impact of AI on the healthcare system because it not only points out the detrimental consequences these technologies have, but also puts these consequences (…)
From supermarket checkouts to Olympic stadiums, video surveillance is becoming smarter, more pervasive, and increasingly controversial.
Anthropology, cultural policy, resistance and innovation in urban space
I really appreciate Jimmy Wales’s insistence that sticking to Wikipedia’s core principals of neutrality, factuality and fostering a diverse community around the globe will eventually prevail in today’s polarized digital landscape. As a nerd myself I also relate very strongly to his enthusiasm of working on Wikipedia for the sake of doing something interesting over (…)
I found Simon Willison’s blog post interesting because he self-critically builds on his lethal trifecta concept. He clearly explains why prompt injection remains an unsolved risk for AI agents and highlights the practical “Rule of Two” for safer design (proposed by Meta AI). He also discusses new research showing that technical defenses consistently fail. His (…)
I do not agree with the article’s conclusion that the “days of the know-nothing consumer are well and truly over”. The article does discuss potential shortfalls, such as both sides of a negotiation relying on specialised chatbots to conduct it, but fails to point out the root issue, namely the reliability of the information. As (…)
