Colloquy

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Is AI Coming for Your Job? Jan 03, 2025

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Technological disruption of human occupations is nothing new. In recent decades, blue-collar occupations have borne the brunt of the upheavals—think of all the factory workers now working at Wal-Mart thanks to the integration of robots on assembly lines. But all that may be changing now. Given artificial intelligence’s ability to do thought work—from crafting feature stories in seconds to writing and editing computer code—disruptive innovation is now coming to a college-educated profession near you.

Feeling concerned? Take heart. Harvard's Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy David Deming says AI is here to make us more productive, not take our jobs—at least not yet. The co-author of the recent paper, "Technological Disruption in the US Labor Market," Deming says that thanks to technology, every small businessperson or professional can now have an indefatigable digital assistant, one with a flawless memory, encyclopedic knowledge, and lightning-fast response time—and one who will never ask for a raise or even a wage.

Deming, who received his PhD from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2010, spoke recently about artificial intelligence and its impact on the labor market during an event for the School’s alumni at the Harvard Club of San Francisco. He was interviewed by Harvard Griffin GSAS Dean Emma Dench, whose questions were sometimes submitted by audience members.

Bob Dylan: From "A Complete Unknown" to "A Prophet Without God" Dec 06, 2024

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With filmgoers buzzing about the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, University of Pennsylvania Professor Jeffrey Edward Green, PhD ’07, says that the legendary singer and songwriter is more than a musician; he’s the conflicted prophet of a fallen world. In his new book, Bob Dylan, Prophet Without God, Green writes that Dylan models, "how to practice self-reliance in a world of permanent injustice and suffering, without appeal to divinity and providence, and without the self-satisfaction of believing he is also adequately fulfilling his social responsibility, or abiding by an individualism that everyone is equally free to practice if they wish." In that sense, Green contends, Dylan “has bestowed a message uniquely suited to a time such as ours."

Beyond 2024—Feminism and the Future of US Politics Nov 01, 2024

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“The future is female.” That was the slogan printed on tee shirts in the early 1970s at the first women’s bookstore in New York City. Fifty years ago, it seemed to be true. The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution had passed the House of Representatives and the Senate by wide margins and gone to the states for ratification. Fifty years later, there has certainly been progress in gender equality, but the ERA is long dead and Roe has been overturned. We speak with Jane Mansbridge, PhD '71, Harvard's Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values and the author of the award-winning book, Why We Lost the ERA, about whether the story of the 2024 election will be the way women voters reclaimed their lost rights and the promise of decades past.

How Reliable Are Election Forecasts? Oct 04, 2024

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Just after Labor Day, American University Professor and Harvard Griffin GSAS alumnus, Allan Lichtman predicted a victory for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. It was a source of some encouragement for Harris's supporters, given that Lichtman had correctly predicted the winner of 9 of the last 10 elections based on his historical analysis of campaign trends since 1860.

Despite his track record, Lichtman has been scorned by election forecasters like Nate Silver, who build probabilistic models based on weighted averages from scores of national and state-level polls. But are these quantitative models really any more reliable than ones that leverage historical fundamentals, like Lichtman's, or, for that matter, a random guess?

The Stanford University political scientist Justin Grimmer, PhD ’10, and his colleagues, Dean Knox of the University of Pennsylvania and Sean Westwood of Dartmouth, published research last August evaluating US presidential election forecasts like Silver's. Their verdict? Scientists and voters are decades to millennia away from assessing whether probabilistic forecasting provides reliable insights into election outcomes. In the meantime, they see growing evidence of harm in the centrality of these forecasts and the horse race campaign coverage they facilitate.

This month on Colloquy: Justin Grimmer on the reliability of probabilistic election forecasts.

How to Succeed in Business by Failing—Intelligently Sep 06, 2024

Show notes

Fail fast, fail frequently, and learn from it. That's the mantra adopted by many Silicon Valley firms in recent years. Fine. But would you tell that to your emergency room doctor for someone who's managing your retirement funds or the pilot of your next flight?

Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson says that the key to squaring this circle is failure-proofing critical areas where best practices are well-known while encouraging experimentation in new fields where useful and productive knowledge can be gathered. That means building a sense of psychological safety among colleagues and coworkers that fosters trust, open communication, and new ideas.

The ‘Invisible Threat’ Contaminating Our Water Aug 30, 2024

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Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent, they’re everywhere, and they're probably bad for you. PFAS are probably bad for you. Some of the detrimental health effects associated with the chemical compounds include liver disease, decreased fertility and hypertension in pregnant women, immune and developmental effects in children including decreased antibody response to vaccines, and certain organ cancers. In this talk, delivered in April 2024 at the annual Harvard Horizons Symposium, scientist Heidi Pickard, PhD '24, uncovers the prevalence of PFAS, as well as their impact on the environment and health.

Testing and the Origins of Big Data Aug 23, 2024

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You’re being tested. You don’t know the criteria used to determine your score—or even your results. The test is being administered not by a human teacher or moderator, but by machines. And it’s going on 24 hours a day, every day of your life. Harvard Griffin GSAS historian Juhee Kang traces the emergence of the obsession with mass-data collection in the early 20th century.

Weary at Work Aug 16, 2024

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As a member of the "people operations" (human resources) staff at Google in the mid-2010s, Harvard Griffin GSAS historian of science Tina Wei was struck by how many perks employees received in the office: door-to-door shuttle service to work, fitness classes, massages, and pantries stocked with snacks, to name just a few. The company even offered a meditation program—with its own branding worked in. In this talk delivered in April 2024 at the annual Harvard Horizons Symposium, Wei argues that, while physiological research on bodily fatigue was originally used to support calls for better protection of US laborers’ safety, over time views of fatigue as a mental issue gave employers an excuse to avoid investing in improvements to working conditions.

A More Accurate Map of the Universe Aug 09, 2024

Show notes

Claire Lamman is part of a team of astrophysicists using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to map as many as 50 million galaxies. In this talk, delivered in April 2024 at the annual Harvard Horizons Symposium, Lamman describes her distinctive contribution to this effort—gauging the “intrinsic alignment” of galaxies to better understand the universe and how it evolves.

Punished in Utero Jul 26, 2024

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Who cares for babies while their mothers are incarcerated? How stable are these households? And how does being exposed to a mother's incarceration in utero impact child development? These are the questions Harvard Griffin GSAS social scientist Bethany Kotlar set out to answer in her research. Combining her experience working with these families and high-quality social science research methods, Kotlar goes beyond the mother-infant dyad to assess the mother-infant-caregiver triad unique to this population.

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