In the swiftly evolving digital landscape, the advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is heralding unprecedented changes in how we interact, work, and innovate. However, this technological renaissance brings to the fore a critical yet often overlooked aspect: widening the existing digital divide. As we stand on the brink of this new era, it's imperative to explore how GenAI literacy and subsequently associated literacies — such as prompt literacy (Maloy & Gattupalli, 2024) and AI literacy (Long & Magerko, 2020) — are becoming pivotal elements of the digital divide, deepen ..read more

How will generative AI affect elections? On the evening of the European Parliament elections, the alarms are sounding: “2024 will be a litmus test for AI’s effects on elections — and voters’ faith in them”. “AI deepfakes threaten to upend global elections. No one can stop them”. These alarmist headlines from across the globe, including reputable outlets like The Guardian and The Washington Post, highlight the widespread concern about how generative AI might disrupt elections. But what is all the fuss about? Generative AI technologies offer a new chapter in the playbook of political campaigns a ..read more

Digital multinationals as a policy goal The lack of European digital multinationals in the global economy has been a source of hand wringing in European digital policy discussions for a long time. As early as 2010, the European Commission lamented that “most of the recent successful internet businesses (such as Google, eBay, Amazon and Facebook) originate outside of Europe” (European Commission, 2010, p. 7). More recently, this anxiety has featured in the debate on whether the rather intricate EU digital regulatory framework constrains private innovation, thus preventing European start-ups fro ..read more

In 2021, the European Union (EU) initiated the Global Gateway with goals for 2021-2027, including partnerships and investments worldwide in areas like sustainability and digital transformation (European Commission, n.d.a). This encompasses regions such as the Middle East, including projects like the Medusa submarine cables connecting North Africa with Europe (European Commission, n.d.b). Scholarly discussions and policy considerations concerning digital governance in Europe appear to be insular and concentrated on the Digital Single Market regulatory aspects (Perarnaud, 2021). However, the EU ..read more

In recent years, the advent of synthetic data — artificially produced data used for data science tasks (Jordon et al., 2022) — has led to a questioning of a premise of “data-driven” societies: the need to collect data from real persons, objects, and events. Thanks to the growing availability of generative artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic data proponents claim, the data needed to train machine learning algorithms can now be produced artificially (Jacobsen, 2023). The promises of synthetic data have taken hold in fields as diverse as finance (e.g. Assefa et al., 2020), transport (e.g. Osi ..read more

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerated the implementation of digital communication tools in public institutions across Europe. Schools, universities, and even government agencies found themselves compelled to catch up on their neglected digitisation efforts overnight in order to maintain their fundamental functions. In this transition to digital services, a multitude of institutions turned to the most readily available option: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions from major platform providers. Although this dependence on Big Tech did provide continuity in the short term, it has now moved ..read more

Introduction In the past years, growing popular debate and technological developments have focused on the potential and promises of decentralised or distributed technologies for purposes of financial transactions, digital governance, data processing, and content sharing. However, the project of leveraging decentralisation as a means of resistance against the centralised and monopolistic models of governance involves a complex array of phenomena and technosocial tensions. Within the traditionally centralised systems of technology governance, there is growing exploration, experimentation, and mi ..read more

From negative impacts on teenagers’ mental health to the abuse of data collection for political microtargeting and potentially abetting genocide against the Rohingya: in the past decade, online platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have been accused of contributing to — in some cases even driving — a host of real-life harms with significant impacts for individuals and communities across the world. Yet even after decades of research, our understanding of platforms’ implications remains limited. Companies tightly control access to their vast amounts of data, leaving researchers dependent ..read more

According to recent studies, Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) output discriminates against women. On testing ChatGPT, terms such as “expert” and “integrity” were used to describe men, while women were associated with “beauty” or “delight”. This was the case while using the Large Language Model, Alpaca,  a model developed by Stanford University to produce recommendation letters for potential employees. This study, and others, have contributed to recognition from official bodies of the dire situation of gender discrimination in AI. For instance, the Report on Preventing Discrimi ..read more

Declaration This work was based on the research developed in the framework of PNRR/NextGenerationEU project "Biorobotics Research and Innovation Engineering Facilities “IR0000036” – CUP J13C22000400007". Why should we bother about cybersecurity in AI systems? According to statistics, a cyberattack currently occurs every 39 seconds, and this trend will only increase and become more and more individualised. Malware attacks have blocked the activities of companies, universities, hospitals, and individuals. Europe (and national states) have started to adopt strategies and regulations that aim at ..read more