#AcademicRunPlaylist - 12/16/24

Author

Ben Waber
December 16, 2024

A selfie of me in front of a classically-designed, large stone building with a gold-domed rotunda looming above against a grey sky. I'm a middle-aged white man with a red beard flecked with white. I'm wearing a grey winter hat, thick black glasses, a black shirt with a grey zip up sweater, and a grey winter coat

It was a looong day, but at least I was able to listen to lots of talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an engaging conversation with Raj Venkatesan on marketing and ethics on the Stakeholder Podcast https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/stakeholdermedia/id/34443940

Next was an intriguing talk by Felix Yanwei Wang on inference-time policy customization using human interactions for specification at MIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoyrZKQw0gQ

Next was a thought provoking discussion with Maria Lucia Passador on corporate governance outsourcing on the Business Scholarship Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIAgVwclTyE

Next was an informative panel on patent law in the AI age with Virginia Driver, Matt Hervey, Michael Prior, and Noam Shemtov at the UCL Faculty of Laws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HEeciUUpts

Next was an amazing talk by Sam Zhang on biases and luck in science at the Network Science Institute. Zhang covers so much ground here - scientist career stages, labor inequalities in universities, elite journal biases, and more. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbaSkbNR0BY

Next were talks at UCL's Stone Centre Symposium:

Simon Johnson - tech and inequality in the last millennium, highly recommend https://youtube.com/watch?v=hlymJvlYHms

Sam Bowles - simulating wealth inequality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGHlInzE3m0

Amy Bogaard - ancient tech and inequality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPp9Twyh4_k

David Wengrow - mismeasuring human history, highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfanSzajTXQ

Next was a short talk by Sara (Zahra) Khanjani on detecting spoofed audio at the UM Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) https://youtu.be/aQN0_RrbewA?si=S6VeU7tejfykIIXp&t=1431

Next was a great talk by Maggie Levenstein on building ethical datasets and methods at MIDAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQDlF4Y_BqY

Next were a slate of talks at Nokia Bell Labs:

Nazanin Andalibi - emotion AI and the future of work, highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZcxy7T-1ps

Zana Buçinca - value-aligned human-AI decision making https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8YljAwvVaU

Aaron Mueller - evaluating and improving LLM generalization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCFyx1e8eqc

Next was an excellent conversation reviewing US worker power developments in 2024 at The Burnes Center for Social Change with Seth Harris, Saba Waheed, and Rebecca Givan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-CpX9KAFx8

Last was "Automating Inequality" by Virginia Eubanks, who lays out a powerful, deeply researched case for reconsidering the role of technology and algorithms in vital human services. By considering in depth a number of specific cases of how different technologies have created Kafka-esque systems that ossify and amplify existing societal biases, Eubanks challenges technologists, researchers, and governments to rethink how and what they build. This book also contains devastating historical analyses of decision making relating to services for the poor, showing that today’s efforts are not an innovation or an aberration. Highly recommend