This guest post emphasizes that while emerging technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning promise to make public sector services more efficient, they also pose ethical challenges in implementation.
In “The Allocation of Decision Authority to Human and Artificial Intelligence” economists Susan Athey, Kevin Bryan, and Joshua Gans share an analysis of how humans and artificial intelligence could work effectively together in the decision-making process.
Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom has studied working-from-home (WFH) and its impact on employees, firms, and societies for many years. In this article, he presents new results from a US survey on WFH during the coronavirus pandemic.
MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu discusses the policies in place that support companies’ choices to increase automation, and he outlines a course of action for policy reforms and technology development that could benefit workers of all skills and backgrounds.
Mary L. Gray, faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, calls out the tech sector for exacerbating “the systemic racism and health disparities that have given the pandemic its grotesque shape in our country — because they ignore them.”
Harvard Business School professor William Kerr shares insights from recent research on business leaders’ views about high-skilled immigration.
University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo and his colleagues Ashkan Soltani (independent privacy researcher and technologist), and Carl Bergstrom (University of Washington biology professor) delved into the feasibility of whether contact-tracing apps can be effective and safeguard individuals’ privacy.
Jonathan Levin, Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, talks about his work on a life-saving economic mechanism to promote vaccines, and the challenges of preparing leaders for the fast-changing future.
Professor Mary Gray, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, expresses reservations about the effectiveness and equity of a cell phone app aimed to put COVID-19 contact tracing in individuals’ hands.
Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, discusses the impact of rapid technological change and public policy with James Pethokoukis on AEI’s Political Economy podcast.