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The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence Regulation
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be what Edison said about electricity - "it is a field of fields... that holds the secret to reorganizing the life of the world". Artificial intelligence, at all of its levels of complexity, is a technology with a radical impact on the global economy and security. AI solutions can be integrated into industrial robots as well as military robots, can become defenders as well as cyber attackers far more agile than human experts, can analyze information to uncover threats but also to violate the rights and the privacy of individuals, as well as to create discrimination or amplify social and political polarization. More than any other technology, artificial intelligence illustrates the dualism of emerging technologies and the need for cooperation, regulation and sustainable adoption of these technologies while maintaining the resilience and values of their respective societies. More
Italy’s Economic Saga
Italy is one of the biggest economies within the eurozone, yet its debt burden now stands as one of the largest globally, surpassing 140% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022. Italian debt spans multiple decades, with the country grappling with high levels of public debt since the 1980s, when the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio stood at around 60%, steadily mounting after that. The problem has evolved into a chronic predicament, persistently afflicting the national economy. The country’s heavy debt burden has caused the government to face higher borrowing costs, compounding the difficulty of reducing the debt over time. This situation puts the Italian economy’s stability at risk, as the slightest adverse change in the global economy can disproportionally hamper the country’s ability to repay its debts. More
“Touchy Pride” Libertarianism and the Accountability for Implicitly Given Consent
When thinking about Libertarianism, one who is not too familiar with terminological specifics would most probably imagine either a society under which laissez-faire Capitalism is the only present economic system, or, as an even more general rule, an ideology which advocates for individual freedom above all else. While these are, for the most part, accurate depictions of the final form Libertarianism would take when put into practice, what cannot be denied is the multitude of potential meanings behind these surface-level characteristics. More
Economics & Football
Football has made the planet crazy, becoming today a veritable secular religion of the globalized world; or, metaphorizing it economically, a “medium of exchange” in the settlement of acts equally qualified as being of the communion type or of the competition type between us: it is both cooperative fun and quasi-blunt dispute. Then the football team is also an organization that optimizes itself by chasing the ball. It is part of a larger structure (club), in which other characters are inserted, usually opportunely, that, although they do not directly run the balloon, lubricate it logistically. These machines then come together to compete for customers, money and, ultimately, for happiness. More
The African Union Opportunity Act (AGOA): A Review of Trade Controversies and Opportunities
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a unilateral agreement commissioned by the US, with the purpose of increasing the volume of trade between the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of such an act is to encourage trade between the United States and qualifying Sub-Saharan economies by reducing tariffs and quotas for certain goods exported from Africa to the US. African countries, however, need to meet certain qualifications. The trade agreement enables the US President to designate countries as eligible based on the following criteria: “market-based economies; the rule of law and political pluralism; elimination of barriers to US trade and investment; protection of intellectual property; efforts to combat corruption; policies to reduce poverty, increasing availability of healthcare and educational opportunities; protection of human and worker rights; elimination of child labor practices” (U.S. Trade and Development Act, 2000). Since its adoption in 2000 under the Bush Administration, AGOA has been the centerpiece of U.S.-African trade relations (Paéz et al, 2010, p.1). Around the same time as the adoption of AGOA, the Chinese government inaugurated a “strategic partnership” with 44 African governments during the Forum on China-African Cooperation (FOCAC). According to the American Chamber of Foreign Affairs, the Chinese administration has promised to increase its imports to a total of $300 billion exclusively from Sub-Saharan Africa by 2024. More
International Conference on Political Sciences
At the political science conference, we will dive into the most recent trends and discoveries, as well as the most pressing matters in various fields and subfields of political sciences. Attendees will listen to the fascinating presentations by esteemed speakers, participate in roundtable discussions, contribute to the buzzing atmosphere of the networking floor, and inspire the next generation of academics.This is an opportunity to deepen and broaden your knowledge about key concepts and subjects in political science as well as to meet with a sea of important academic and professional experts from diverse disciplines. More
Homo (Sapiens Sapiens) Digitalensis
After a flourishing era, in which humankind discovered the steam engine, standardization and electricity, a new beginning was on the horizon. Even though society reached unbelievable levels of productivity and new levels of wealth throughout the world, we were missing the last piece of the puzzle. The beginning of the Third Industrial Revolution has brought us a new way of communication that enabled us to send and receive data instantly. We have to look back to the 1950s when the base of the digital was laid and, after that, the world, as we know it, changed forever. Fast forward to the 1990s, the “.com” phenomenon reached its first all-time high, and new ways of interaction were created. We are talking about Google, Amazon and many others. The 2000s brought more core services through Facebook and YouTube, social media and streaming respectively. After people started consuming more and more digital content, technology needed to keep pace with demand; as a result, 4G communications (fourth generation data transfer speeds) are now a very common thing, 5G is becoming the new standard and we already see how 6G is ramping up its marketing drive in countries like China, Japan, South Korea and more. More
The Symphony Strikes Back
During a military parade, nothing is more eye-catching than the expensive hardware that is brought in order to display the nation’s capacities and ambitions, which are calibrated in a rigorous manner to eventually self-defend itself, a desirable scenario that is. A sense of pride and marvel usually engulfs the audience in what can cynically be described, in the words of the heavy metal band Pantera, as a “vulgar display of power”.However, the audience rarely, if ever, questions the aspect of value, and if they do so, the numbers skyrocket to a degree where they no longer become palpable. The bread is cheap, while the circus is as expensive as ever.The event that the world witnessed a few days ago may have been a coup, a travelling circus accompanied by the music of a reputable German composer, a rebellion, a display of power or a combination of all of the above. The nature of the event is still uncertain, but it manages to give us another example of why economic privileges can lead to complications. More
“To Know” – That’s the Essence of Journalism!
The daily journalist is the professional who doctors us against informational nightmares – the wordplay I prefer to use in order to summarise this vocation (which is vocal in both a literal and a figurative sense). And I use that metaphor because, paradoxically, it is “in broad daylight” when “the night of the mind” acts with a most uncommon ferocity. This saying applies with particular accuracy to the so-called science journalism. This specialised form of journalism only managed to become its own thing starting in the second half of the twentieth century, occupying today a significant portion of the written, audio-visual and online press. Science journalism must be produced and consumed as something more than a mere form of entertainment. Sure, it diversifies our field of understanding of the world and of life, but its purpose is not to delight – even though it has curiosity (and curiosities) at its core –, nor is it to distract – though it successfully deviates from the trivialisation of reality and, equally so, from its vulgarisation. One of the harsher “stress tests” it was confronted with was the Covid-19 pandemic, which consisted of a mix of fake news and pseudoscience that oscillated between (or was even maintained by) “occult conspiracies” and “official statements”. More
Growth, Degrowth and Greening
Although discussions about the relationship between economics and the environment are no longer confined to scientific forums and have in fact become an inspiration for a variety of popular movements, it is often difficult to grasp the core issues at stake. The public agenda is literally flooded every day with news regarding the trade-off between preserving industrial jobs and averting climate change; supporting urban development and preventing environmental degradation; ensuring living conditions for an increased human population and avoiding biodiversity loss; but the average citizen is often unable to see how all these worrisome, dire, even catastrophic events and proposed solutions fit together in a coherent way and could therefore be addressed in a rational manner. More
A Walking Encyclopedia: Revisiting Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, an Austrian aristocrat who lived in the United States with his family for a decade after the Anschluss, was a journalist, linguist, novelist, encyclopedist, political scientist, theologian, and student of the human character who reported – on site – and bore even-handed witness to many of the great events of the mid-twentieth century, including the Ukraine famine, the Nazi revolution, the Spanish civil war, and Congolese independence. The first part of this retrospective appreciation is drawn from the first part of a review of Leftism Revisited published as “Yes, but…,” Modern Age, 34 (Spring 1992): 241-45.[1] More
Inflation: A Well-Known Phenomenon
Over the past two years approximately, inflation has resurfaced in Romania. Initially, price increases appeared to be temporary and due to purely external causes: international commodity market tensions and supply difficulties in a context of strong recovery of the global economy after the end of the pandemic restrictions.[1] Thereafter, inflation was found to be persistent and fueled by domestic factors, both on the supply and demand side.[2] In the short term, the most recent and possibly the most important cause of inflation has been the increase in energy prices exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. In the medium to long term, inflationary pressures are likely to increase as a result of structural factors such as imbalances in the Romanian economy, stagnating investment, demographic decline, a shift to (more expensive) green energy etc. The way these factors act and combine is specific to the Romanian economy, and, as a result, a monetary policy adapted to indigenous realities is necessary. The monetary policy decisions taken by the Fed, the ECB and the other central banks in the region that are not part of the euro area will also be of particular importance. These external decisions are important in view of the evolution of the interest rate differential and the orientation of international capital flows into which the Romanian economy is inserted. More
