Is it possible to sustain maritime coercion without it escalating into outright war? The paper reviews the posture and activities of the Chinese coast guard and maritime militias to address this question. In so doing, it challenges the widespread notion in the literature that Chinese maritime coercion in the East and South China Seas (ESCS) is best described as a grey zone strategy. The ‘grey zone’ notion uncritically assumes that the use of force is designed to remain below the threshold of war.

Whether you believe self-driving cars will one day reach a full autonomy level or not, they still raise important ethical questions in terms of responsibility and privacy, as well as the particular vision they imply for the future of our societies. Some of these issues have been tackled by researchers, with most impactful works coming from the MIT Social Media Labs. In particular, the Moral Machine experiment succeeded in reaching a wide global audience.

Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”

The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the E P Abraham Lecture Theatre, Green Templeton College.
Convenor: Meera Selva

The polarization of social media discussion by online propaganda (including misinformation and disinformation from human trolls and bots) is the subject of growing public concern, particularly because of its possible disruptive effects on Western elections. This seminar will present a method of polarization analysis based on interactions among Twitter users in the context of Brexit. The speakers will also consider the need to clarify what we mean by polarization as a process and an outcome. Can we accurately identify social media actors?

"Realism" in international relations is constructed from past experience of what is likely and what is possible in the world. AIs may change this sense of the possible tremendously - shifting both the ways that countries can compete and undermine each other, and the deals that might become possible. On top of that, AI itself will become a strategic asset - and target - of great value.
This talk will argue for why AI could become so powerful, sketch the dangers intrinsic to AI and to misuse of AI by bad actors, and talk about how the world could be transformed by these technologies.

Recent studies on voters' preference in competitive clientelistic settings rely on the crucial assumption that, in the absence of monitoring mechanisms, clients will choose to support candidates that they believe will be the best patrons. Based on ethnographic research in rural Brazil, this paper argues that voters leave their preferred choices aside to support likely winners even when they judge these as corrupt and unreliable patrons.