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4 June 2018

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The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on 25 May. It matters because, even if it aims at protecting the data privacy and rights of European citizens, it sets an international precedent and gets adopted by big tech companies in the US. This ugly but useful BBC video gives a good overview of what GDPR means for you. Four years in the make, the 88-page long regulation [I did not read it] is receiving its share of criticism from libertarians accusing Europe to bring down America, to analysts arguing that it will kill innovation by crushing small tech players. I, for one, think it is a big step in the right direction.

In a development context where cash transfers keep gaining traction and Universal Basic Income experiments keep growing, The Economist’s “How psychotherapy improves poor mothers’ finances” caught my attention. It shows how depression rates fell spectacularly for hundreds of pregnant Pakistani women suffering from depression when they were offered cognitive behavioral therapy during their third semester.  It also shows that 7 years after the treatment, these women were more likely to control their families’ finances than those who had not benefited. Such treatment may be better than cash transfers “since it does not disrupt local social norms. It may not give a mother new options, but helps her choose better from those she does have.”

My graph this week comes from Sharpin and Harris’s “Securing safe roads” [H/T Erica Mattellone] showing that the first cause of death among young people is traffic accidents. This graph focuses on 15-29 year olds but, I checked, and the same is true for 10-19 year olds. 90% of road fatalities happen in low- and middle-income countries where they cost 5% of GDP per year. I did not know that. As road safety is not a political priority, we should all make more noise about it.

My quote this week is from Jobbatical CEO Karoli Hindriks developing a “digital nomad visa” for Estonia: “Borders are not the reflection of policy and politicians. There are the reflection of the borders in our heads. They are the borders that keep us from pursuing our dreams…You, me, us – we are the border guards of our lives.”

20 May 2018

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Late Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think” should be mandatory reading for anybody working in development. It is a fun and educating book. It uses anecdotes from Rosling’s eventful life to illustrate the absurdity of widespread development beliefs shaped by the media and activists. Because it is good storytelling, it sticks with you. It also infects the reader with Rosling’s passion for exploring data and taking the long view. So even if you think you have seen his bubble graphs or heard his monkey survey story one too many times, go and get yourself a copy.

McKinsey Global Institute’s “Notes from the AI frontiers” analyzes 400 applications of AI in 19 industries. It has useful maps of analytical techniques and AI potential per industry and functional areas. It shows that AI is mostly used in combination with traditional analytics: AI augments more often than it replaces. And it estimates the potential annual value creation of AI around $3.5-5.8 trillion with greatest promises in marketing, sales, supply chains and logistics.

I liked Iman Ghosh’s “A world of languages” and wished I had the time to merge its data with demographics to see what it would look like in 2030 and 2050. With Africa doubling its population by mid-century, the size of French will grow significantly, “making it the most-spoken language by 2050”. Wait. What? I need to share this with my kids as they start packing to come join me in France soon. 

My quote this week is from Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya: “We are entering a new era, when the center of gravity for social change has moved to the private sector. It’s business, not government, that is in the best position to lead today.  It’s not government hiring refugees, it’s business. It’s not government cutting emissions, it’s business. It’s not government standing up to gun violence, it’s business. It’s not government that’s going to end inequality, or create opportunity. It’s business.”

19 May 2017

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Delivered earlier this week during the Belt and Road Summit, Zheng Bijian’s “China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) plan marks the next phase of globalization” presents OBOR as a global game changer. Indeed, this is the biggest infrastructure plan ever: 65 countries, 62% of the world population and 30% of global GDP. The total investment need is $5 trillion. China already pledged $113 billion, 9 of which in the form of aid to poor countries. More funding will come from the BRICS’s New Development Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. Unless you are in the Americas, chances are that what you do is somehow connected to this initiative. I guess, even if you are in the Americas, there will be externalities. Looking at power dynamics in the region, much of the talk focused on India’s lack of support. Next summit scheduled for 2019.

Danny Hernandez’ “How our company learned to do better predictions about everything” is what I shared when asked about best practices to improve organizational data literacy. Let me be clear here: I don’t know anything about best practices in that area. But I read this interesting article the day before I was asked the question. The company is Twitch, an Amazon offshoot. It invested in growing the predictive skills of every single staff member irrespective of functions and ranks. An initial phase warmed up employees by asking them to play with past company metrics, like “how much do you think our sales grew last quarter?” Once they got comfortable, they were asked to make predictions that would impact their work, like “how confident are you that you can complete this project in 3 weeks?” At first, Twitch employees were not excited: they did not believe in predictions, were afraid of making bad predictions, and thought that there was not enough evidence to make good predictions. But after the training, 96% of them said they would recommend it to a colleague. This initiative improved Twitch’s collective forecasting capacity. And it boosted efficiency as employees got better at evaluating ideas, defending funding proposals, and setting expectations. Other good ideas I heard this week: have data days in your teams or spend 10 minutes everyday on data issues. I am adding the latter to my daily routine.

CBinsights’ “From virtual nurses to drug discovery: 106 artificial intelligence startups in healthcare” maps the growing AI health market which is revolutionizing the whole industry from direct assistance to patients, to diagnosis, to drug discovery and mental health treatment.

 

My quote this week is from Elon Musk’s “The future we are building – and boring”: “I am not trying to be anyone’s savior. I just want to think about the future and not be sad.“

12 May 2017

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The Economist’s “A growing share of aid is spent by private firms, not charities” is worth reading as it crunches US and UK aid data to put numbers behind this trend: 25% of USAID and 22% of DFID spending went to private firms in 2016, both on the rise. The drivers behind this growth are: a shift from project-delivery to system-shaping  requiring technical advice that firms are best equipped to provide;  a “doing more with less” aid culture leading to more outsourcing; and private contractors’ ability to quickly match time-bound freelancer teams with complex development problems. Private contracts are also getting bigger leading to the market concentration of contractors and a growing number of consortium where small fish are used as “bid candy” by lead contractors. The Economist documents some of problems associated with these trends including higher delivery costs and risks of frauds, calling for aid agencies to take a close look at their bidding and contract practices.

WFP’s “At the root of exodus” puts numbers on the food/conflict/migration nexus. It models data from 88 countries with negative net migration and 178 countries with outflow of refugees during 1990-2015. It shows that the number of people migrating increases by 1.9% for each percent increase in the number of food-insecure people, and by 0.4% for each additional year of conflict. It also shows that migration can increase food insecurity both for those leaving and those staying behind, and that food insecurity is a significant determinant of the incidence and intensity of armed conflict. The study complements these findings with qualitative data collected through focus group discussions with 231 migrants from 10 countries in Greece, Italy, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and validated via 570 household phone surveys in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Once on the move, food and economic security are key determinants of whether people keep going or settle. Half of Syrians interviewed in Jordan and Lebanon want to move elsewhere while only a quarter of those in Turkey plan to.

My visual this week is from the Developing Human Connectome Project which just released its first open access data. The EU-funded project aims at creating 3D brain maps of fetuses and newborns to understand how the human brain develops and what triggers certain afflictions like autism. Adult brain maps already exists. So these guys are focusing on the 20-44 weeks post-conception window, and doing MRIs on hundreds of babies in the womb.

 

 

My quote this week is from Eurasia Ian Bremmer’s “The wave to come”: “Nationalism is alive and well, partly because the problems that provoked it are still with us. […] Now here’s the really bad news: an even larger crisis is coming. The popular fury convulsing Europe and the U.S. may well spill over into the rest of the world. Just as the financial crisis, which began in the West, produced rumbling aftershocks around the globe, so the nationalist explosion will rattle the politics of countries on every continent.”

5 May 2017

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The Financial Times Foreign Affairs chief Gideon Rachman published “Easternization: Asia’s rise and America’s decline from Obama to Trump and beyond”. I have not read the book but this interview gives the gist of the argument. It is not new, it strengthens the message around a trend that many have documented. What was interesting to me was Jessica Mathews saying that she was not convinced because (i) global leadership takes more than global economic (and even military) power; (ii) China has to balance between global, regional and national hot issues; and (iii) there are other forces in “the East”, such as the rise of India, that are still looking West. And what was equally interesting was to read, in parallel, Danny Quah’s (Eastern?) perspective. In “Can Asia lead the world?”, Quah agrees that it takes more than a growing economic, military and population footprint to lead globally. He argues that Asia’s leadership strategy should focus on soft power and that its driving values could be different from liberal democracy. Ultimately, he says that Asia will only be able to lead if it has a story. For him, that vision does not exist, yet.

Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson’s “Writing that works” is the book I recommended when a colleague asked me for guidance on improving writing skills. I love that book. It identifies the most common writing weaknesses and gives specific tips that you can use to practice, practice, and practice until you get it right. I don’t, so I go back to it regularly and am never disappointed. They give guidance on how to write memos that get things done, plans that make things happen, proposals that sell ideas, and resumes that get interviews. It is a good way to spend 11 dollars. At one point, I also had Josh Bernoff’s “10 top writing tips and the psychology behind them” pasted on the wall next to my desk so that I could check it from time to time. I should put it back.

My graph of the week is from NYU Center on International Cooperation’s Global Peace Operational Review which, among other things, tracks the new Secretary-General (SG)’s senior appointments (USG and ASG) throughout the system by gender and nationality. 17 male vs 14 female so far in 2017. That’s for his new appointees. Overall, at this level, the situation today is 71% male vs 29% female. Not great. The SG committed to reaching parity at senior level by 2021 and across the system before 2030 and he asked his Gender Parity Task Force to come up with a plan to get there. Let’s watch and see.

 

 

My quote this week is from 80-year old Nobel Prize Daniel Kahneman: “There are studies showing that when you present evidence to people they get very polarized even if they are highly educated. They find ways to interpret the evidence in conflicting ways. Our mind is constructed so that in many situations where we have beliefs and we have facts, the beliefs come first. That’s what makes people incapable of being convinced by evidence. So education by itself is not going to change the culture. Changing critical thinking through education is very slow and I’m not very optimistic about it.”

 

28 April 2017

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Tim Urban’s “Neuralink and the brain’s magical future” is a deep dive on the evolution of the brain from the first nerve appearing in a sponge 600 million years ago all the way to the future of brain-machine interface (BMI). I like Urban’s explain-this-to-me-like-I-am-a-5-year-old blog posts. They are long but entertaining. You can tell he spends hours going down the rabbit hole and processing tons of information to extract what the reader needs to know and to select the funniest, weirdest, and most beautiful illustrations. The post came out as Elon Musk launches Neuralink, a company developing BMI to connect humans and computers. Neuralink is the latest addition to Musk’s electric car/mega-battery/rocket/hyperloop futuristic empire. Musk’s plan is to “bring something to market that helps with certain severe brain injuries (stroke, cancer lesion, congenital) in about 4 years. [And he thinks that] we are about 8 to 10 years away from this being usable by people with no disability.”  Before that announcement, the timeframe for having commercial BMIs for people without disability was 2050. So let me bring this home: his plan could make BMIs part of the “how” of reaching the SDGs.
When asked why he invested in this field, Musk responds that he tried to raise the alarm bell about the possible dangers of artificial intelligence [remember? the group of concerned tech/scientists writing that warning letter] with no traction, so he decided to go ahead and develop BMI options for the social good.
Should we invite him to the UN for an early conversation about BMI governance issues? He may enjoy this trip back in time. But in addition I would suggest that someone from the UN flies to San Francisco now to convince Musk to add an ethicist to Neuralink’s 8-member core team.

UNEP Inquiry’s “The financial system we need” is the second edition of a report that takes stock of the financial system’s alignment with sustainable development. It records a steady growth of sustainable finance initiatives across the banking, investment, and insurance sectors; a rapid expansion of the green bond market ($118 billion); and a growing number of supporting policies and regulatory measures (210 in 60 countries). While these represent only a fraction of the global financial system (eg. green bonds account for less than 1% of total bond issuance), the green movement has successfully infiltrated the finance world over the past decade and offers a number of lessons and opportunities on which the social sector can build from the pricing of externalities to the design of new financial instruments to the engagement with the G20.

My visual this week is from the WEF’s gender gap report browser. It’s the visual story of a decade worth of gender data from 144 countries. It is not new but was nominated for the 2017 Webby Awards for best web campaign, eventually given to UNWomen for their “Women footprint in history“, also really cool.

 

My quote this week is from Feedback Labs Dennis Whittle’s interview with Denver Frederick “when you put people into a system that does not face competition and that is top-down, and it has too much power, you get a culture where people are trying to impress each other more than having an impact on the ground where they are working. They’re listening to the voice of their colleagues rather than listening to the voice of the people that they seek to serve. That creates strange dynamics that are really unfortunate and sad.”

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