#AcademicRunPlaylist - 7/2/24

I spent lots of time shuttling the kids around to various camps today, but at least I was able to listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an excellent talk by Carl Shapiro on the evolving role of market structure in merger analysis at the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI). I would've liked more reflection on the failures of post-1980 merger analysis (since they've clearly been poor), but Shapiro still provides enlightening perspective on the new US's new merger guidelines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6bqJykZD88

Next was an interesting talk by Chinchih Chen on geographic patterns of spatial collaboration at INET Oxford. There's a lot to argue with about how the data is prepared here (they eliminate 87% of papers, the disruption index is not suited to this analysis, etc.), yielding a ridiculously high estimate for the effects of ICT on scientific collaboration, but at least this gives us a ceiling to work with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h6Wg1ETFVI

Next was a fascinating panel on AI and the pitfalls of machine translation at Brown University with Ellie Pavlick (bringing the humanities into AI development), Marine Carpuat (HCI challenges in machine translation), and Dan Garrette (multilingual language models) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN1GhfC1cXs

Next was a great talk by Giorgio Monti on the intersection of law and economics in merger control at the EU court of justice at MaCCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZR6CGUKfYM

Next was an intriguing talk by Sugandha Srivastav on challenges with bringing breakthrough technologies to market at INET Oxford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm0Pxtfk5DE&t=9s

Next was a thought-provoking talk by Virgilio Almeida on governing algorithmic systems through a sociotechnical lens at ACM FAccT. Almeida introduces the concept of treating algorithms as institutions in their own right, which I think is compelling and deserves to be explored more https://youtu.be/aNuTOeohfVU?si=iHcqhbs0qwYwhQzV&t=998

Next was an informative talk by Anna Alexandrova on the relationships between banks, markets, and the state at the Cambridge Society for Economic Pluralism (CSEP) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBWQ_ydziTs

Next was a compelling talk by Yash Kant on making 2D diffusion models 3D-aware at UCLA Computer Science https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoqIcMSBtWI

Last was an engaging talk by Richard Bradley on critically examining notions of uncertainty and probability in science and the world more broadly at CSEP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRSKSBlpozM