Closing the North-South Gap in the New Space Age

Although humanity’s dream of venturing into outer space was achieved during the first space age, the benefits of those forays were concentrated among only a few nations. Now, at the beginning of a second, and highly commercialized, space age, “many societies, especially those in the Global South, are at risk of being excluded from the potentially enormous economic and technological gains of this new phase of space competition.”

In their paper, Chaitanya Giri and Kyle Hiebert offer “recommendations for how to ensure that space, even if it is not universally accessible, remains a peaceful domain used in a responsible way to benefit the development of all nations, not just a select few.”

Nestor Maslej writes that the tenor of conversation about artificial intelligence (AI) has changed in the months since ChatGPT was launched: “Now the public is less interested in strictly discussing what AI can do and more curious to debate how we, as a society, should react to it.”

Alongside the major policy action that has taken place within a year of AI’s “arrival moment,” sustaining this conversation will be key to ensuring we get the AI systems we want: “those that will advance, and not hinder, human flourishing.”

Cookies have long been the engine of the online advertising model. Users, privacy advocates and privacy regulators have been nudging the industry to find a less invasive way to conduct its business, and some browsers have blocked third-party cookies by default. But in late July, Google announced it was dropping its plan to eliminate third-party cookies in the Chrome browser, proposing instead an “updated approach that elevates user choice.”

Taking a look at how we got here and the way forward, Mark MacCarthy presents Google’s decision as a cautionary tale for industry, policy makers and advocates alike.

The Digital Policy Hub at CIGI is a collaborative space for emerging scholars and innovative thinkers from the social, natural and applied sciences. Here are the most recent working papers from the winter 2024 cohort of Hub fellows.

Shirley Anne Scharf: “Digitalization in Korea, Sweden and Canada: Examining Governance”

Mahatab Uddin: “Farm Data Ownership and Intellectual Property Laws”

Follow the links on the Hub webpage to learn more about the Hub scholars and their work!