Matrix Podcast

Recorded on December 2, 2025, this video features a talk by Maximilian Kasy, Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford, presenting his book The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works (and Who Benefits). This talk was part of a symposium series presented by the UC Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Training Program (CRELS), which trains doctoral students representing a variety of degree programs and expertise areas in the social sciences, computer science and statistics. The talk was co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) Tech Cluster, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), and the UC Berkeley Department of Economics. A transcript of this recording can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/max-kasy. About the Book AI is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential decision-making in courtrooms, job interviews, and wars. The ubiquity of AI is so great that it might produce public resignation—a sense that the technology is our shared fate. As economist Maximilian Kasy shows in The Means of Prediction, artificial intelligence, far from being an unstoppable force, is irrevocably shaped by human decisions—choices made to date by the ownership class that steers its development and deployment. Kasy shows that the technology of AI is ultimately not that complex. It is insidious, however, in its capacity to steer results to its owners' wants and ends. Kasy clearly and accessibly explains the fundamental principles on which AI works, and, in doing so, reveals that the real conflict isn't between humans and machines, but between those who control the machines and the rest of us. The Means of Prediction offers a powerful vision of the future of AI: a future not shaped by technology, but by the technology's owners. Amid a deluge of debates about technical details, new possibilities, and social problems, Kasy cuts to the core issue: Who controls AI's objectives, and how is this control maintained? The answer lies in what he calls "the means of prediction," or the essential resources required for building AI systems: data, computing power, expertise, and energy. As Kasy shows, in a world already defined by inequality, one of humanity's most consequential technologies has been and will be steered by those already in power. Against those stakes, Kasy offers an elegant framework both for understanding AI's capabilities and for designing its public control. He makes a compelling case for democratic control over AI objectives as the answer to mounting concerns about AI's risks and harms. The Means of Prediction is a revelation, both an expert undressing of a technology that has masqueraded as more complicated and a compelling call for public oversight of this transformative technology. About the Speaker Maximilian Kasy received his PhD at UC Berkeley and joined Oxford after appointments at UCLA and Harvard University. His current research interests focus on social foundations for statistics and machine learning, going beyond traditional single-agent decision theory. He also works on economic inequality, job guarantee programs, and basic income. Kasy teaches a course on foundations of machine learning at the economics department at Oxford. Learn more at his website.

Recorded on November 17, 2025, this recording features a talk by Seth Lunine, Lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, who presented a talk reflecting on his experiences with collaborative scholarship between UC Berkeley undergraduates and community-based organizations in Oakland's Fruitvale District. Lunine's courses are part of the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program, which aims to transform how faculty's community-engaged scholarship is valued, to enhance learning for students through a combination of teaching and practice, and to create new knowledge that has an impact both in the community and the academy. In Fall 2024, students in Lunine's Geography 50AC: California collaborated with Canticle Farm and Restorative Media, two nonprofits located in the Oakland Fruitvale District. ACES students developed story maps to represent the spatial histories of the Canticle Farm site. To create these story maps, they analyzed historical newspaper articles, real estate promotions, archeological reports, and city planning documents, revealing legacies of Indigenous stewardship, the Brown Power movement, redlining, and criminalization that has shaped Canticle Farm. Another group of ACES students collaborated with the Executive Director of Restorative Media, an organization led by formerly incarcerated and systems-impacted people, to interview Canticle Farm stakeholders about their movement activism and life stories. This event was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Public Service Center, and presented as part of a new event series featuring talks by UC Berkeley lecturers and professors who earn praise from students for their teaching. The speakers are invited to deliver a favorite standalone lecture, reimagined for anyone curious to learn. A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/seth-lunine.

The technical world of insurance is a critical lens through which to understand the escalating crises in climate change and housing. As climate risks intensify, both public and private homeowner insurance markets face unprecedented pressure, revealing the interconnections between housing affordability, wealth inequality, and the broader financialization of our communities. Recorded on November 13, 2025, this panel brought together experts to explore the intersection of insurance, housing, and climate. The panel featured Stephen Collier, Professor of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley; Desiree Fields, Associate Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley; and Dave Jones, Senior Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley School of Law. Meg Mills-Novoa, Assistant Professor with a joint appointment to the Division of Society and Environment in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management and the Energy and Resources Group, moderated. The panel was co-sponsored by UC Berkeley Department of Political Science, the Department of Geography, and the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI). A transcript of this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/financializing-disaster.

Physical spaces profoundly influence community well-being. Understanding this relationship is crucial for leveraging planning and policy to foster equitable outcomes. Recorded on November 3, 2025, this panel brought together experts to explore how thoughtful planning and strategic policy can shift power toward communities, creating conditions where all can thrive. The discussion bridged diverse perspectives on environmental conservation, design psychology, and disability studies to illuminate steps toward more just and inclusive environments. The panel featured You-Tien Hsing, Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley; Sally Augustin, Lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces and Principal at Design With Science; and Karen Nakamura, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Disability Studies Lab at UC Berkeley. Meredith Sadin, Associate Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy and Senior Researcher at the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab, moderated. The panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces, the Possibility Lab, the Center for Research on Social Change, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Anthropology. A video and transcript of this podcast are available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/spaces-for-thriving

Conspiracy theories are a pervasive and powerful force in contemporary society, shaping public discourse and influencing real-world events. Understanding their origins, spread, and impact is crucial in navigating today's information landscape. Recorded on October 27, 2025, this panel brought together experts to delve into the multifaceted world of conspiracy theories. Drawing on diverse academic perspectives, the discussion explored the nature of conspiracy theories, their societal implications, and how they are understood and addressed. The panel featured Michael M. Cohen, Associate Professor of American Studies and African American Studies at UC Berkeley, and Tim Tangherlini, Professor in the Department of Scandinavian and the School of Information at UC Berkeley. Lakshmi Sarah, journalist and lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, moderated. Matrix On Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. These thought-provoking events are free and open to the public. This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Scandinavian, African American Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. A video and transcript of this podcast is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/conspiracy-theories.

On October 15, 2025, Matrix hosted an Authors Meet Critics panel on the book Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence, by Patrice Douglass, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley. Professor Douglass was joined in conversation by Salar Mameni, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, and Henry Washington, Jr., Assistant Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Courtney Desiree Morris, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley, moderated. The event was co-sponsored by the Center for Race and Gender, the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, and the Department of Ethnic Studies. The Social Science Matrix Authors Meet Critics book series features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars. About the Book In this incisive book, Douglass interrogates the relationship between sexual violence and modern racial slavery and finds it not only inseverable but also fundamental to the structural predicaments facing Blackness in the present. Douglass contends that the sexual violability of slaves is often misappropriated by frameworks on sexual violence that privilege its occurrences as a question of ethics, sexual agency, and feminine orders of gendering. Rather, this book foregrounds Blackness as engendered by sexual violence, which forcefully (re)produces Blackness, corporeally and conceptually, as a condition that lacks the capacity to ontologically distinguish its suffering from what it means to be human. By employing and critically revising Black feminist theory and Afro-pessimism, Douglass reveals that engaging primarily with the sexualization of the slave forces theories of sexual violence to interrogate why this violence — one of the most prevalent under slavery — continues to lack a grammar of fundamental redress. There are no reparations struggles for the generational transfer of sexual violation and the inability of present frameworks to rectify the sexual stains of slavery lies precisely in the fact that what made this history possible continues to haunt arrangements of life today. "Engendering Blackness" urgently articulates the way our present understandings of Blackness and humanness are bound by this vexed sexual history. For a transcript of this panel, please see https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/engendering-blackness.

Recorded on September 22, 2025, this video features a talk by Davon Norris, Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) and Faculty Associate at the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics at the University of Michigan. Professor Norris's research is broadly oriented to understanding how our ways of determining what is valuable informs patterns of inequality with an acute focus on racism and racial inequality. Often, this means he studies the history, construction, and operation of various ratings, scores, and rankings whether that be at the government level (i.e., government credit ratings) or individual level (i.e., consumer credit scores). Other work that comes out of this interest in valuation processes further probes questions related to finance and the role of credit and debt in shaping inequality. His research has been published in outlets such as Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, Social Problems, and Sociological Forum, and has received awards from the Future of Privacy Forum and American Sociological Association. His work has been funded by the American Sociological Association. Davon received his Bachelor of Science in Accounting (2014), Master of Arts in Sociology (2018) and Ph.D. (2022) in Sociology all from The Ohio State University. This talk, "Legitimation by (Mis)identification: Credit, Discrimination, and the Racial Epistemology of Algorithmic Expansion," was presented as part of a symposium series presented by the UC Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Training Program (CRELS), which trains doctoral students representing a variety of degree programs and expertise areas in the social sciences, computer science and statistics. (Learn more at: https://crels.berkeley.edu/.) The event was co-sponsored by Social Science Matrix, the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) Tech Cluster, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), and the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. Learn more at https://matrix.berkeley.edu. A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/davon-norris

Borders reflect the many social, historical, and political forces that shape global movement and identity. While borders often suggest fixed lines of division, the experiences within and around them increasingly influence national and global understandings of belonging, sovereignty, and human rights. Recorded on October 1, 2025, this panel together a group of UC Berkeley graduate students from the fields of history, sociology, and ethnic studies for a discussion on borders and their impact, particularly through the lens of migration, mobility, and resistance across the U.S.-Mexico border. The panel featured Carlotta Wright de la Cal, PhD Candidate in History; Adriana Ramirez, PhD Candidate in Sociology; and Irene Franco Rubio, PhD Candidate in Ethnic Studies. Hidetaka Hirota, Professor of History, moderated. The Social Science Matrix New Directions event series features research presentations by graduate students from different social science disciplines. This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, Department of Ethnic Studies, and Department of History. For a transcript of this podcast, visit https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/borderlands.

The innovation, use and experience, and exchange of new and emerging technologies today are influenced by the role that China plays in global politics and economy. Recorded on April 18, 2025, this Matrix on Point panel brought together experts of the Chinese political economy and law and society in a conversation to discuss the political, economic, security, and social dimensions and complexities of technology in China's internationalization during times of global tensions. Topics covered included the institutional foundations of China's technological development, technology governance and industrial policy, global technology competition, and legal technology and societal impacts in today's China. The panel featured Mark Dallas, Professor of Political Science and Science, Technology, and Society at Union College; Roselyn Hsueh, Professor of Political Science at Temple University and Visiting Scholar at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative; and Rachel E. Stern, Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Berkeley. AnnaLee Saxenian, Professor in the School of Information, served as chair and moderator. Matrix On Point is a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. The panel was co-presented by the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, and co-sponsored by the Institute of International Studies (IIS), the UC Berkeley School of Information, and the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science. This public panel is a part of the two-day Bringing the Sector Back In conference, also co-sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. A video recording of this panel is available on YouTube. A transcript of this recording can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/tech-and-china

Large corporations increasingly dominate markets, the flow of information, and political influence. In response, many governments have used antitrust policies in an attempt to rein in companies. Examples include investigations and cases brought by the United States and the European Union against Google, in addition to major investigations against Microsoft, Facebook, and others. Recorded on April 25, 2025, this Matrix on Point panel brought together scholars of political science, economics, and law to discuss the changing landscape of antitrust policy in an era of multinational corporations. The panel included Michael Allen, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; Prasad Krishnamurthy, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley; and Amy Pond, Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Ryan Brutger, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, moderated. The panelists spoke about new challenges in competition policy, the domestic and international dimensions of antitrust policy, and the economic, political, and social considerations that shape antitrust policy and enforcement. The event was presented as part of Matrix On Point, a discussion series promoting focused, cross-disciplinary conversations on today's most pressing issues. Offering opportunities for scholarly exchange and interaction, each Matrix On Point features the perspectives of leading scholars and specialists from different disciplines, followed by an open conversation. These thought-provoking events are free and open to the public. A transcript of the panel this recording is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/governing-giants.