Machine Learning for Peace:

Digital Tools for Civic Actors

PDRI-DevLab

University of Pennsylvania

November 21, 2023

Principal Investigators: Erik Wibbels, Jeremy Springman

Data Scientists: Zung-Ru Lin, Hanling Su

Affiliates: Serkant Adiguzel, Mateo Villamizar Chaparro, Diego Romero, Rethis Togbedji Gansey, Jitender Swami

MLP: Approach


How can data contribute to human rights defense?

  1. Awareness: data on what’s happening very recently
    • Mass scraping online news + ML to track events
    • Interactive data dashboard

  2. Planning: predictive analytics for strategic decisions
    • Forecasting political events
    • Civic Space Early Warning System

Data Production

Input: Online news

  • 300+ news sources
  • 34 languages
  • approx 100 million articles

Data quality

  • Focus on reputable local sources
  • Much better coverage than extant archivers/aggregators (GDELT, Wayback, Lexis Nexis, etc.)



Output: Monthly data

  • 56 countries
  • 2012 - last month

MLP: Digital Tools

MLP: Digital Tools

MLP: Digital Tools

Awareness: Civic event detection

Uganda: Arrests

Planning: Forecasting events

Successful Early Warnings

  • ~70% success rate
  • ~60 events across 25 countries

Purges:

  • Rwanda (Aug)

Legal Changes:

  • Senegal (Jul)
  • Georgia (Feb)

Arrests:

  • Kosovo (May)
  • Nicaragua (Apr)

Legal Actions:

  • Uzbekistan (Jul)
  • Kosovo (Jul)
  • Zambia (Jun)

Protests:

  • India (Mar)

Non-lethal Violence:

  • Guatemala (Jun)

Security mobilization:

  • Philippines (Apr)

Activities & Extensions

  • Distribution:
    • 2k+ unique website visitors across 102 countries (since June)
    • ~150hr/mo active app usage time
    • Mailing list of ~500
    • Data access request form (getting 1/wk)
  • Accessibility:
    • New dashboard (last week)
    • Integrating LLM-generated summaries (in development)
    • Extracting new events/info from text

Recent & Ongoing Policy Research

  • Russian influence behavior around invasion
  • Corruption scandals and civic mobilization
  • Electoral cycles in Russian/Chinese influence
  • Electoral cycles in repression
  • Bukele’s use of propaganda outlet around corruption scandals
  • Impact of violence against journalists on reporting

Leveraging MLP data

Funded collaborations

  • ATARI (completed)
  • Pandemic Backsliding (completed)
  • ReMedios (M&E measure)
  • Zimbabwe Governance Analysis
  • EU Institute for Security Studies
  • Local Evaluation and Evidence Support

Invited public events

  • AI for Social Good (Oxfam, Red Cross)
  • Forus International Ethical AI Manifesto
  • Human Rights Funders Network Webinar
  • World Bank Webinar

Prospective funded collaborations

  • US Army Special Forces AI team
  • Meta proposal (with World Bank)
  • IRI Consortium for Elections & Political Process Strengthening (with International Foundation for Electoral Systems)
  • Justicia Efectiva Contra la Criminalidad y Corrupción (with DAI)
  • Dataminr Forecasting Competition
  • UN CRAF’d grant (failed)

External Engagement

Ongoing conversations with funders

  • Human Rights Funders Network
    • Private conversation in December
  • Wellspring Philanthropic Fund
    • Briefing in Nov
  • Peace and Security Funders Group
    • Briefing in Jan

Briefings for potential collaborations

  • Interagency PRC Data Group: Presentation in Dec
  • USAID/Serbia: Briefing in Oct

Recent inquiries for collaboration

  • Alliance for Peacebuilding (Mercy Corps)
  • International Crisis Group: Climate Conflict Early Warning
  • Peloria: World Bank projects in Uganda, DRC, South Sudan
  • Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
  • EU INFORM Risk
  • Diakonia

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