#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/4/24

Boston weather once again demonstrated that winter isn't truly over until mid-April, so amidst a decent storm I took solace by listening to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a wide-ranging talk by Elisa Bellotti on gender and social networks at the Women in Network Science (WiNS) seminar. Bellotti introduces the theoretical literature on how gender norms influence interactions, then surveys a number of fields showing how these norms manifest in network phenomena and subsequently outcomes. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMEuaMT6-Lo

Next was a great talk by Andrés Abeliuk on the social impacts of algorithmic decision-making at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Abeliuk brings back some of the seminal work in this space and develops new models and experiments to show how algorithms can be tweaked to diminish spurious popularity effects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=088xEXjUOM0

Next was an all-star panel on reinvigorating antitrust with Lina Khan and Daron Acemoglu at the CEPR - Centre for Economic Policy Research. The conversation gets into Khan's efforts to return US antitrust enforcement to its original purpose, the dynamics of power and technology, and more. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9d9iLI-_u4

Next was an interesting talk by Fariba Karimi on how group mixing impacts ranking and perception of minorities in social networks at the WiNS seminar https://youtu.be/nSbshAOqnF4?si=NYCIzRfUE2nIysQG&t=5878

Next was an incredible talk by Hamsa Bastani on rethinking fairness in human-AI collaboration at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. This is some of the best work I've seen in AI in awhile - Bastani emphasizes the importance of optimizing not for the accuracy of an algorithmic prediction in a vacuum, but rather optimizing for the overall system (which includes the necessary human decision maker). She then demonstrates a general method for optimizing in this way, which is extremely promising. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sswD-kMkCxk

Next was a powerful talk by Cassidy R. Sugimoto on the institutionalization of gender disparities in science at the WiNS seminar. Sugimoto methodically reveals the huge disparities across nearly every area of academia, the multi-faceted roots of these disparities, and some steps we can take to start fixing these systemic issues. Highly recommend https://youtu.be/yN1ajMPqXEE?si=rroE6DNEMNjAs6la&t=10231

Next was a riveting talk by Madhur Behl on developing and deploying autonomous driving systems in real Indy car races (!) at the GRASP Lab. The race footage here is nuts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dS6CLQem0w

Next was a nice talk by Joshua Strauss on using games for measuring team dynamics at the College of Information Studies (INFO), University of Maryland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfAbvTttgo&t=16s

Next was a fascinating talk by Taylor Jaworski on the impact of WW2 mobilization on US regional development at the National Bureau of Economic Research https://www.youtube.com/live/NzW-yHg9Hmk?si=wL-A0WZH11cGRo-I&t=8207

Next was an important talk by Trevor Ngwane on the role of the labor movement in the defeat of apartheid in South Africa and the decades since at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kaItxYIqww

Next was an intriguing talk by Octavia Camps on architectures for sequence analysis at the MIT Embodied Intelligence seminar https://www.youtube.com/live/wiGj_WYdYzQ?si=koPBJg4dx8fNVtv6&t=935