Weekend Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations (October 30, 2020)
Innovation through iteration: Policy feedback loops in China’s economic reform; Humanity is stuck in short-term thinking. Here’s how we escape; Machines, Artificial Intelligence, & the Workforce
Read: Innovation through iteration: Policy feedback loops in China’s economic reform [From Science Magazine]
Read: Humanity is stuck in short-term thinking. Here’s how we escape. [From MIT Technology Review]
Read: The US House Report on Big-Tech is a must-read. They had some of the world’s top anti-trust economists and legal experts as advisors.
Listen: Cold Chain: 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy The global supply chain that keeps perishable goods at controlled temperatures has revolutionised the food industry. It widened our choice of food and improved our nutrition. It enabled the rise of the supermarket. And that, in turn, transformed the labour market: less need for frequent shopping frees up women to work. As low-income countries get wealthier, fridges are among the first things people buy: in China, it took just a decade to get from a quarter of households having fridges to nearly nine in ten.
Listen: Product Design Ethnography: Business anthropologist Dr. Amy Goldmacher discusses how her ethnographic work empowers product and software designers to better understand their users and customers. Using anthropological research methods, she helps design new and improved products, software, and experiences that better meet people’s needs.
Watch: Machines, Artificial Intelligence, & the Workforce: Recovering & Readying Our Economy for the Future. The US House Budget Committee hears from expert witnesses and discusses the trajectory of AI and machine learning, the magnitude of the potential changes to our economy and workforce, and the federal policies that may be needed in response. Expert witnesses include:
Susan Athey, Ph.D. – Economics of Technology Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Associate Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Daron Acemoglu, Ph.D. – Institute Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Darrell West, Ph.D. – Vice President and Director of Governance Studies, Brookings Institution
Jason Matheny, Ph.D. – Founding Director, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Georgetown University; Commissioner, National Security Commission on AI
Watch: Wharton Professor Adam Grant on the Psychology of Resilience [via Goldman Sachs]
Chart of the Week: The $88 Trillion Global Economy [ Via the Visual Capitalist]