Is Technology Outpacing Organizations?

AI, Capital Markets, and the Disruption of Labor Examined at MIT Event

By Paula Klein

We live in extremely paradoxical and contradictory times. Economics and technology are no exceptions. “Digital progress makes the economic pie bigger, but there’s no economic law that everyone, or even most people, will benefit,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), at a summit on April 27.

Moreover, while the pace of AI and machine learning–including robotics, image, and speech recognition — accelerates exponentially, skills, education and organizations are lagging. How do we unravel these contradictions and bridge the gaps?

Hilary Mason, General Manager, Machine Learning, at Cloudera, and Claudia Perlich, a Senior Data Scientist at Two Sigma, spoke of correcting biases –both human and machine — infiltrating technology tools, as did author and data scientist, Cathy O’Neil. One solution, the human resource platform, Blendoor, was created to eliminate algorithm-bias in hiring, said CEO Stephanie Lampkin.

In the financial sector, Adena Friedman, President and CEO of Nasdaq, and Brian Moynihan, Chairman and CEO, Bank of America, addressed the need for better privacy protections, the promise and perils of cryptocurrencies, and AI-driven applications that can ensure accessible consumer services. Their firms are racing ahead to keep pace. Bank of America has developed its own speech recognition app and Nasdaq is closely watching Blockchain.

One common theme was clear: Disruption is apparent everywhere. Workers in all fields must be more like rock climbers than ladder-climbers as they navigate today’s circuitous career paths, according to Lavea Brachman, VP at Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation. She is optimistic that some regions of the country, like Detroit, will find new opportunities for growth and technology jobs as old labor models are upended. Social media, meanwhile, is caught up in a web of false news, as Professor Sinan Aral explained, and just about everyone blames education for failing to train tomorrow’s workers.

Related posts:

I planned to write about Trump’s January 6th attempts at dictatorship, but this morning’s news dropped a bigger bombshell. The extremist Supreme Court ruled against the Environmental Protection…