IB Global Politics Topic Technology Questionbank (HL)

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "The 'intelligence' in artificial intelligence rests on human hands. Before a chatbot can answer safely, workers must label vast amounts of data and filter out violent and abusive content. Much of this work is outsourced to the global South. In 2023 it emerged that workers in Nairobi, Kenya, had been paid around two dollars an hour to read and tag disturbing material to train a leading AI system, with some reporting lasting psychological harm. The value and profit flowed to technology firms in wealthy countries, while the low-paid, hidden labour sat elsewhere. Campaigners called it 'data colonialism': a familiar pattern in which raw inputs and cheap labour are extracted from poorer regions to enrich a powerful few."

(a) Using the stimulus, three things it suggests about the global labour behind artificial intelligence.

(b) one political issue raised by the global division of labour behind artificial intelligence.

(c) Recommend a course of action that could make the global AI economy fairer to workers in the global South, and consider its limitations.

(d) the extent to which the global artificial-intelligence economy reproduces existing inequalities between rich and poor states.

Stimulus

Adapted from Poisoning the Well: Platforms and the Politics of Truth by Daniel Ferreira (2023), published in the Journal of Media and Democracy.

Efforts to curb online harms turn on two different demands. 'Content moderation' focuses on the individual post: platforms remove, label or downrank specific pieces of misinformation, hate speech or incitement, deciding case by case what stays up. It is reactive and vast in scale, and it puts private companies in the position of policing speech.

'Platform accountability' shifts the question from single posts to the system itself: how recommendation algorithms amplify outrage, how advertising incentives reward engagement over accuracy, and whether companies can be held legally responsible for the design choices that spread harm. Where moderation treats each bad post as the problem, accountability treats the architecture that promotes it as the problem.

(a) Using at least two examples from the stimulus, between 'content moderation' and 'platform accountability'.

(b) With explicit reference to a global political challenge from one of your researched case studies, how digital platforms have contributed to the spread of disinformation or harm.

(c) Based on your answer to part (b), recommend a change that would hold platforms more accountable for the harms they amplify.

(d) the extent to which digital platforms undermine rather than strengthen democratic politics. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "In the 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan used relatively cheap Turkish-made TB2 strike drones and Israeli-made loitering munitions to destroy Armenian tanks and air defences from the sky, helping decide the conflict in weeks. Cameras mounted on the drones broadcast the strikes online. Armed drones let a state project lethal force with no pilot at risk and, for its leaders, at low political cost at home. Critics warn that removing the soldier from danger also lowers the threshold for using force, while strikes guided from thousands of kilometres away blur who is accountable when civilians die. What began as the weapon of a few powerful states is now spreading fast."

(a) Using the stimulus, three things it suggests about the use of armed drones.

(b) one political issue raised by the spread of armed drones.

(c) Recommend a course of action that international actors could take to govern the use and spread of armed drones, and consider its limitations.

(d) the extent to which the spread of armed drones has lowered the threshold for the use of force and weakened accountability.

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "When COVID-19 struck, governments rolled out digital tools to track the virus. Singapore's 'TraceTogether' app and token logged who users had been near, and officials promised the data would be used only for contact tracing. In 2021 the government admitted that the police could also access it for criminal investigations, prompting a public backlash and a new law to restrict its use. Around the world, emergency powers introduced to fight the pandemic, from location tracking to health-status apps, often outlived the crisis. Analysts described a familiar 'ratchet': surveillance powers are quick to grant in an emergency and slow to give back once the emergency passes."

(a) Using the stimulus, three things it suggests about digital surveillance during the pandemic.

(b) one political issue raised by emergency digital surveillance.

(c) Recommend a course of action that would help ensure emergency digital surveillance does not permanently erode civil liberties, and consider its limitations.

(d) the extent to which digital surveillance introduced during health emergencies poses a lasting threat to civil liberties.

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "A new class of weapon can search for, select and kill a human target on its own, with no person deciding to pull the trigger. Supporters say lethal autonomous weapons react faster than any soldier, keep troops out of danger and can be more precise. Critics, including many scientists and a coalition of states, argue that handing life-and-death decisions to an algorithm crosses a moral line, that machines cannot make the judgements the laws of war require, and that no one can be clearly held responsible when they kill the wrong people. At the United Nations, talks under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have dragged on for a decade, and in 2023 the General Assembly passed its first resolution urging action, but the major military powers developing these systems have resisted a binding ban."

(a) Using the stimulus, three things it suggests about lethal autonomous weapons.

(b) one political issue raised by lethal autonomous weapons.

(c) Recommend a course of action that international actors could take to govern lethal autonomous weapons, and consider its limitations.

(d) the extent to which lethal autonomous weapons should be prohibited under international law.

IB Global Politics Technology Questionbank

IB Global Politics Technology Questionbank