scholarly journals Artificial Intelligence as a Resilient Tool for Fighting Inequalities in the COVID-19 Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Luís Capucha ◽  
Nuno Nunes ◽  
Alexandre Calado
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Term Change

Can artificial intelligence (AI) be a sustainable way to help solving the Covid-19 global problem? What does the way how welfare states, charity organizations and labour markets are dealing with the pandemic crisis tells us about the AI capacity for reducing exposition of underprivileged groups to the desease? It is becoming more and more visible how the new coronavirus pandemic is affecting specifically the most deprived and vulnerable groups, and also the big difference that welfare states and their policies make. What did the pandemic show about the relations between social inequality, welfare state provision and AI? This presentation will discuss the role of AI as a tool for public policies fighting inequalities that were amplified during the Covid-19 crisis. It will be analysed how the welfare state, the labour market and social communities are already incorporating AI tools and how this can eventually produce more resilient paths. Accelareted and amplified by the Covid-19, several processes of AI penetration in health, education, healthcare, social security, public administrations, labour and surveillance of citizens, became a subject of public discussion. Artificial intelligence is currently a process of long-term change in health and biotechnologies, long-distance education, teleworking, automation, robotization, consumption behaviours, surveillance and human enhancement. An in-deep analysis of the Portuguese case will support the lessons that can be learnt from AI and its use in public policies in a context of pandemic crisis, leading to a set of political recommendations, to promote its application as a resilient tool to fight inequalities.

Social Cohesion, Breaks, and Transformations in Italy, 535–600

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Pohl
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Ancient Society ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Classical Culture

When the Gothic War began in Italy in 535, the country still conserved many features of classical culture and late antique administration. Much of that was lost in the political upheavals of the following decades. Building on Chris Wickham’s work, this contribution sketches an integrated perspective of these changes, attempting to relate the contingency of events to the logic of long-term change, discussing political options in relation to military and economic means, and asking in what ways the erosion of consensus may be understood in a cultural and religious context. What was the role of military entrepreneurs of more or less barbarian or Roman extraction in the distribution or destruction of resources? How did Christianity contribute to the transformation of ancient society? The old model of barbarian invasions can contribute little to understanding this complex process. It is remarkable that for two generations, all political strategies in Italy ultimately failed.

scholarly journals Broken Worlds: Towards an Archaeology of the Shatter Zone

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Raffield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Physical Geography ◽  
Trigger Factors ◽  
Eastern Woodlands ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Historic Change

AbstractIn recent years, archaeological studies of long-term change and transformation in the human past have often been dominated by the discussion of dichotomous processes of ‘collapse’ and ‘resilience’. These discussions are frequently framed in relatively narrow terms dictated by specialist interests that place an emphasis on the role of single ‘trigger’ factors as motors for historic change. In order to address this issue, in this article I propose that the study of the ‘shatter zone’—a term with origins in physical geography and geopolitics that has been more recently harnessed in anthropological research—has the potential to facilitate multi-scalar, interdisciplinary analyses of the ways in which major historical changes unfold across both space and time, at local, regional, and inter-regional levels. This article unpacks the concept of the shatter zone and aligns this with existing archaeological frameworks for the study of long-term adaptive change. I then situate these arguments within the context of recent studies of colonial interaction and conflict in the Eastern Woodlands of North America during the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how a more regulated approach to the shatter zone has the potential to yield new insights on the ways in which populations mitigate and react to instability and change while also facilitating comparative studies of these processes on a broader, global scale.

scholarly journals Invited Commentary: Social Cohesion, Depression, and the Role of Welfare States

2019 ◽  
Vol 189 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-357
Author(s):  
Mikael Rostila
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
State Theory ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Neighborhood Disorder ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract In this issue of the Journal, Baranyi et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2019;000(00):000–000) examine the longitudinal associations of perceived neighborhood disorder and social cohesion with depressive symptoms among persons aged 50 years or more in 16 different countries. An important contribution of their article is that they study how neighborhood-level social capital relates to depression in different welfare-state contexts. Although the authors provide empirical evidence for some significant differences between welfare states in the relationship between social capital and depression, they say little about potential explanations. In this commentary, I draw attention to welfare-state theory and how it could provide us with a greater understanding of Baranyi et al.’s findings. I also discuss the potential downsides of grouping countries into welfare regimes. I primarily focus on the associations between social cohesion and depression, as these associations were generally stronger than those for neighborhood disorder and depression. Finally, I provide some suggestions for future research within the field and discuss whether the findings could be used to guide policies aimed at increasing social cohesion and health.

scholarly journals Konkurs na Europejską Stolicę Kultury jako czynnik zmiany. Doświadczenia polskich miast

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Paweł Kubicki ◽  
Bożena Gierat-Bieroń ◽  
Joanna Orzechowska-Wacławska
Keyword(s):  
Innovative Development ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
European Capital Of Culture ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
Urban Narratives ◽  
Transformation Processes

This article contains an analysis of the “ECC effect,” that is, the long-term change produced in Polish cities by participation in the competition for European Capital of Culture 2016, which lasted in Poland from 2007 to 2011. The authors concentrate on four basic subjects: (1) city identities; (2) city images; (3) the influence of new cultural institutions on the socio-cultural fabric of cities; and (4) the development of cultural policies and the Europeanization of Polish cities. Their findings are based on the research project “The ECC Effect: In Search of New Urban Narratives,” which was commissioned by the IMPART Festival Office and conducted in 2016 in 7 of the 11 candidate cities: Gdańsk, Katowice, Lublin, Łódź, Poznań, Szczecin, and Wrocław. The authors claim that the competition for European Capital of Culture indubitably initiated extensive transformation processes in Polish cities. It led to an improvement in their images more openness and internationalization, and to a redefinition of the role of culture in innovative development policies.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Personal Assistants on Marketing

2018 ◽  
pp. 5748-5756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina L. McDowell Marinchak ◽  
Edward Forrest ◽  
Bogdan Hoanca
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Customer Satisfaction ◽  
Security Requirements ◽  
Marketing Effort ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Personal Assistants ◽  
Customer Trust ◽  
The Impact

This entry will review the state of the art in AI, with a particular focus on applications in marketing. Based on the current capabilities of AI in marketing, the author's explore the new rules of engagement. Rather than simply targeting consumers, the marketing effort will also be directed at the algorithms controlling the consumers' virtual personal assistants (VPAs). Rather than exploiting human desires and weakness, marketing will need to focus on meeting the user's actual needs. The level of customer satisfaction will be even more critical as marketing will need to focus on establishing and maintaining a reputation in competition with those of similar offerings in the marketplace. This entry concludes with thoughts on the long-term implications, exploring the role of customer trust in the adoption of AI agents, the security requirements for agents and the ethical implications of access to such agents.

Cognition in construction grammar: Connecting individual and community grammars

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-337
Author(s):  
Lynn Anthonissen
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Small Individual ◽  
Age Cohorts ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Language User ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

AbstractThis paper examines, on the basis of a longitudinal corpus of 50 early modern authors, how change at the aggregate level of the community interacts with variation and change at the micro-level of the individual language user. In doing so, this study aims to address the methodological gap between collective change and entrenchment, that is, the gap between language as a social phenomenon and the cognitive processes responsible for the continuous reorganization of linguistic knowledge in individual speakers. Taking up the case of the prepositional passive, this study documents a strong community-wide increase in use that is accompanied by increasing schematicity. A comparison of the 50 authors reveals that regularities arising at the macro-level conceal highly complex and variable individual behavior, aspects of which may be explained by studying the larger (social) context in which these individuals operate (e. g., age cohorts, community of practice, biographical insights). Further analysis, focusing on how authors use the prepositional passive in unique and similar ways, elucidates the role of small individual biases in long-term change. Overall, it is demonstrated that language change is an emergent phenomenon that results from the complex interaction between individual speakers, who themselves may change their linguistic behavior to varying degrees.

Employment and the Working Poor

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérôme Gautié ◽  
Sophie Ponthieux
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Working Poor ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Working Poverty ◽  
The Individual

This article examines the phenomenon of working poverty and issues relating to employment and the working poor. It first provides an overview of the problems of definition and measurement regarding the working poor, along with the consequences of the diversity of definitions. In particular, it considers different current definitions of the statistical category “working poor” and how definitions affect the assessment of the in-work poverty phenomenon. It also provides a “statistical” portrait of the working poor and explores how the risk of working poverty has evolved in the 2000s. Finally, it discusses the causes of working poverty, including low income at the individual level and the role of welfare states, and outlines potential remedies in terms of public policies.

The American Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Early History ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
History Of

Background on the American welfare state. What we mean by welfare states; early history of American welfare state; causal factors in regard to how it developed, and the American welfare state in comparative perspective. We also look at the role of political justification in the development of American welfare programs.

Artificial intelligence will disrupt job markets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Labour Supply ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past

Significance Developments in AI over the past year have generated much excitement. However, the glare of such news often creates difficulty in allowing individuals to understand its real, and longer-term, impacts on business, government and culture at large. Impacts Rising automation will intensify debates around a guaranteed 'basic income'. Workplace automation will lead to increased specialisation in the workforce. In the long term, long-distance haulage will experience a massive increase in latent labour supply.

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