Diplo Blog

75 years ago, humanity created the United Nations in order to safeguard peace, promote human rights, and enable development. Given the challenges of that time, it was a necessary step toward a more stable and secure world.

In recent years, DiploFoundation has received a growing number of calls from course participants to include video interaction in our online courses. This post reflects briefly on the use of Zoom meetings in Diplo’s online learning activities, and aims to inspire a wider discussion within Diplo’s community on the use of video chat.

The artificial intelligence (AI) Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) can write texts on any topic. OpenAI, the organisation that developed and released it as a beta version in June 2020, describes it as a general-purpose application for creating text, ‘allowing users to try it on virtually any English language task’. GPT-3 is a scaling up, by two orders of magnitude, of the previous model released by OpenAI, making it ‘the most powerful natural language processing (NLP) application available today’. 

On 21 September, DiploFoundation launched the humAInism Speech Generator as part of its humAInism project. By combining artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and the expertise of Diplo’s cybersecurity team, this tool is meant to help diplomats and practitioners write speeches on the topic of cybersecurity. 

This year, the 6th South Eastern European Dialogue on Internet Governance (SEEDIG) on 21-25 September 2020 – the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) regional initiative for South Eastern Europe and the neighbouring area – was supposed to hold its sixth annual meeting in Moldova, and the community was looking forward to visiting the famous Moldovan wineries after day-long debates on the region’s digital policy realities and challenges.

We organised our September WebDebate, ‘The UN at 75: Evolution or revolution?’, to mark the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. By looking back at the past 75 years of the world organisation, we zoomed in on two key questions. 

Studies show that people tend to gravitate more towards negative news than positive ones. While this may be a worrying trend, hope exists for a more positive type of content, according to research led by Prof. Stuart Soroka from the University of Michigan.

Looking back to see the future of digital governance

This year, we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). For this occasion, as part of the WSIS Forum 2020, a series of high-level discussions are being held between 7–10 September 2020.

Unveiling a series of new events and tools for policy practitioners

There’s more than one reason why September feels fresh. The equinox marks a change in the seasons. Schools, offices, and parliaments resume their work, and the diplomatic calendar kicks off. But this year’s re-entry is like no previous one.  

As we face unprecedented change and an uncertain future, it is the right moment to revisit the fundamentals upon which our society is built. A full examination of the values, ideas, and concepts that have worked in our society is necessary to guide what will work as we grapple with accelerating modernity. With technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), advanced genetic modification, and automated weapons all quickly becoming a reality, our humanity will be challenged like never before.