Rethinking Podcast

In the seventh interview of the series we are joined by five amazing experts from the Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) community: Jessie Finocchiaro (CU Boulder), Sera Linardi (University of Pittsburgh), Faidra Monachou (Stanford University), Ana-Andreea Stoica (Columbia University),   and Lily Xu (Harvard). Together we explore how you can apply mechanism design and machine-learning in economics and other disciplines to create markets that optimize social welfare. We’ll also explore some difficulties which economists and computer-scientists working on this topic have in-common, such as how to use assumptions as perfect rationality. Similar to almost all interviews, we also discuss the importance of interdisciplinary working. This interview gives you a good overview of how to get started as an economist to apply mechanism design and machine-learning to make a difference in the world!

The sixth interview of the series features Martin Ford (Futurist and Author), Carl Benedikt Frey (University of Oxford), & Joshua Gans (University of Toronto, Toronto), who will discuss how technological progress has historically and is currently affecting our economy, especially focusing on the labour-market. Will this be different for the currently disruptive technologies, especially AI and robotics, and if so, how? How should we interpret predictions about future progress in AI, such as when we’ll have self-driving cars? What can we learn about history and models from how AI and robotics will change our economy and labour-market? What should we change in our economics education related to this topic? This interview was recorded on 10th of September 2020. All dates referring to “next year” refer to 2021.

This week we are joined by John Halamka (Mayo Clinic), Jennifer Joe (Vanguard.Health), Luba Greenwood (Harvard), and Umbereen Nehal (MIT) to discuss how disruptive technologies as AI and platforms are transforming healthcare right now. How does the future of healthcare look like from the perspective of those using the technologies everyday as practitioners, company-builders and executives? What current and future developments are they most excited about? How does this relate to ethics, inclusion, and bias? What should economists know about how disruptive technologies are transforming healthcare?

In this episode we talk with Anne Kervers. Anne is a PhD candidate who focuses her research on A New Normative Framework for Corporate Debt. Anne in fascinated by money and money creation. She explains how money is created and how her perspective on money has changed over time. We talk about growth, economic growth and other ways to measure growth. Next to that, we talk about protesting and how to protest in times of a pandemic. We discuss Extinction Rebellion NL, of which she is a rebel. Thank you for Rethinking with us. Enjoy the episode!

In the fourth interview of the series we are joined by Kay Firth-Butterfield (World Economic Forum), Wendell Wallach (Yale), Renée Cummings (Urban AI), and Celeste Kidd (University of California, Berkeley). This interview we’ll be focusing on something that we brought-up in the other panels but haven’t got a chance to go in-depth into: governance, bias, and ethics of AI. What do these terms mean in the context of AI and other disruptive technologies, and how do they relate to criminology (juridical system), psychology (belief formation), and economics (assumptions)? How does all this relate to social media and how is AI affecting inequality? Why is diversity and inclusivity so important in data-science and society more generally?

For this third interview in this series we are joined by Diane Coyle (University of Cambridge), Andrea Renda (CEPS and College of Europe) and Charlotte Stix (TU Eindhoven and University of Cambridge). We will discuss what makes the digital economy unique and how technologies are shaped by their social environment. We will also focus on how disruptive technologies as AI are affected by and interact with policies and regulation, especially in the context of the European Union. Lastly we will zoom-in on how all this relates to the way we teach economics, especially in relation to the assumptions in economic theory and the need for interdisciplinary approaches.

In this second interview for the series we will be speaking with Andrew McAfee (Co-Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy) and César A. Hidalgo (ANITI Chair at the University of Toulouse). How are disruptive technologies as AI transforming not only our economy, but also our society? We discuss topics as increasing and decreasing inequalities, if there are and will be enough jobs and whether we need an universal basic income (UBI). We also focus on how economics relates to other disciplines and the importance of learning advanced econometric methods, which often relate closely to machine learning.

In this episode, we are talking with the host of the new Rethinking series: the socioeconomics of disruptive tech. Koen Smeets put many of the most knowledgeable people together regarding economics and technology. In this episode, we get to hear the behind the scenes! A little more about Koen before we start: Koen Smeets is an Honours Student Economics and Business Economics at Radboud University, doing next year an exchange with Peking University in Beijing. As part of Honour Programmes he's also researching the history of economics and economic thought, FinTech and the socioeconomics of disruptive tech, especially AI. Besides this he's also been a Winner, Mentor and Organiser of various Hackathons at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Daron Acemoğlu and Martin Wolf explore the impact of disruptive technologies on the economy and society and discuss the need for adaptability. They address the consequences of algorithmic and robotic automation, the changing labor market, perspectives on AI, and the socioeconomic division caused by technology. They also discuss nationalism, civil society, and critique simplistic free market thinking in economics.

Hey there fellow Rethinker! Stefan van Niekerk is the president of the Durham society for economic pluralism. In this episode, we talk about the Society, learning about investing and the cultural differences he has experienced. Of course, the episode contains a whole lot more, but you will have to listen to find out what else you can learn from him! Enjoy this episode of the Rethinking Podcast, coming to you from Rethinking Economics NL. + link to the magazine of the Pluralism Society https://thepluralist.uk/