The intensified digital divide: Comprehending GenAI

Mennatullah Hendawy, Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS)

PUBLISHED ON: 14 Jun 2024

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.

Can we fix access to platform data? Europe’s Digital Services Act and the long quest for platform accountability and transparency

Svea Windwehr, Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte/Society for Civil Rights
Joschka Selinger, Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte/ Society for Civil Rights

PUBLISHED ON: 27 Mar 2024

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 In

Banning children’s social media use: A wave of symbolic regulations, but at what cost?

Pascal Schneiders, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Alicia Gilbert, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

PUBLISHED ON: 13 Mar 2024

Recent public discourse on social media sounds somewhat dystopian: Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and co. knowingly use manipulative design features and algorithms to keep users hooked. Children and young people are particularly susceptible to this — staring at their screen for countless hours, they become addicted, depressed, and plagued by anxiety. Losing control over their own behaviour, they neglect other activities. A problem so serious that politicians need to intervene.

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.