small talk 2.0

What can we learn from international organizations’ resolve to regulate AI Part I I planned to write this article long before the global outbreak of COVID-19. When I started six months ago my new diplomatic position representing Israel at international organizations based in France, I was surprised to discover how much importance all of them - OECD, Council of Europe, UNESCO - relate to Artificial intelligence, and especially to its regulation and ethics. As I embarked on more extensive research, I realized that this issue has become for multilateral diplomacy both an unavoidable item on their agenda and a reputational gold mine. As I contemplated this, I suddenly found myself in a new reality of “confinement” decreed in France and almost elsewhere in Europe. A reality of social distancing, of closed restaurants, cafes and theaters (in Paris - can you imagine that?), of frightening reports of the numbers of infected and dead, of attempts, sometimes contradictory, sometimes de...

It’s hard to avoid a jubilant tone in speaking about Israel and innovation when the first lunar spacecraft, made in Israel, is making its way to Earth’s natural satellite. In the last 20 years Israel has become a world leader in new technologies and science and there is no better proof to this claim that the flight of “Bereesheet” (“In the beginning” in Hebrew, the first words in Genesis) that started on February 22 and made Israel the 4 th nation in the world, after USA, USSR and China, who sent a spacecraft to the Moon. Some experts argue that the turning point for Israel’s innovation was in the beginning of the 1990s, thanks to a successful professional integration of the highly educated immigrants from former Soviet Union and as a result of a new form of collaboration between academia and industry encouraged by government. But the truth is that already in the first years after its establishment Israel embarked on innovative solutions to problems that faced many developin...

The word “upcoming” at the title of this post is quite misleading. In the last 2 to 3 years the problems associated with the functioning of the existing social networks turned into a real snowball, or even snow avalanche. A fusion of important political events (US Presidential elections 2016, to take the most conspicuous example), as well as decisions taken by the management of social networks themselves, exacerbated situation and created a crisis. As a result, governments of many countries have taken actions against the social networks practices, ranging from demands to change the privacy policies to restrictions on access or complete ban of networks. But the apex of this crisis is ahead of us. I will argue here that while governments will try to exert a greater control over the contents published on social networks, and while social networks will be willing (or forced) to adopt their policies to these demands, this one-sided, restrictive and “correctional” approach, will not be...

A few days ago I re-watched a video that I was using extensively in my presentations 8-9 years ago to promote the concept of digital diplomacy. The name of the video was “Is social media a fad?” Apparently, since 2009, when this video was produced for the first time, the updated versions of it, under the same title, were produced almost every year. When you watch those videos, the bottom line is obvious: social media is not a fad. It is a new way of communication, much more now  than in 2009 (even though some of the social networks have proven to be a fad).  But is digital diplomacy a fad? When I asked this same question on this blog 8 years ago, rather rhetorically, I truly believed it was not. Today I think I should correct my opinion, and here is why. Diplomatic outreach on social networks: numbers that show nothing? Digital diplomacy came into existence about 10 years ago with the invention of social networks and appearance of a small group of diploma...