More News from IWER

A paper, co-authored by assistant professor Michiel Bakker, described efforts to train a large language model as an AI mediator to help small groups in the UK find common ground while discussing divisive political issues such as Brexit, immigration, the minimum wage, climate change, and universal childcare. The paper was rated highly for sustainable development goals (SDG).

Professor Y. Karen Zheng said smallholder farmers, who represent 80% of the world's farms and produce more than half of global food calories, remain among the most vulnerable groups despite their critical role in global food security. "Smallholders feed the world, but they're often the ones struggling the most," she said.

In a recent visit to the Tec de Monterrey Business School in Mexico City, senior lecturer Paul Cheek discussed the challenges of entrepreneurship and innovation in the country and the role of Artificial Intelligence in business transformation.

Research scientist Ranjan Pal and co-authors wrote: "Agentic AI will bring new, complex types of cyber threats. Therefore, we should have a multi-layered and intelligent approach to protect against them using both existing protective measures as well as new ones designed specifically to prevent the operation of autonomous systems."

In this Lean Blog Interviews podcast episode, professor Nelson Repenning shares insights drawn from his decades of experience studying system dynamics, lean thinking, and organizational learning. He explains how leaders often fall into the "capability trap" — spending their days firefighting immediate issues instead of improving the underlying system.

Amazon is likely able to automate jobs faster than most of its rivals because of its scale, said associate professor Lawrence Schmidt. "It's not at all crazy to think that Amazon might want to shed certain types of roles, or refrain from hiring additional people in certain types of roles, if they can be quickly automated," he said. "Regardless of what happens to counts of jobs overall you would expect there to be reallocation."

"Models need so much more data and in multiple formats," said principal research scientist George Westerman. "Where it used to be making sense of structured data, which was relatively straightforward, now it's: 'What do we do with all this unstructured data? How do we tag it? How do we organize it? How do we store it?' That's a bigger challenge."

At a Bitcoin focused event this month research scientist Christian Catalini made the case that open networks and interoperability are the foundation of the next era of payments. Catalini argued that the future of money depends on shared infrastructure, not walled gardens — and that the battle for openness is ultimately cultural, not technical.

Studies of the economic impacts of climate change often look at long-term, national costs. A new BPEA study by professors Christopher Knittel and Catherine Wolfram takes a different approach, focusing on the current household level costs attributable to changing weather. Professor Wolfram joined the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity to discuss the research.

Without a retail website as an "intermediary," shoppers can find their desired products more efficiently, since an AI algorithm finds results from across the internet and compiles them in one location, said principal research scientist George Westerman. He questioned the reliability and trustworthiness of the results and who might benefit from them. "Who's influencing the recommendations it gives you?" he said. "It's unclear how neutral AI results are because they've got to make money somehow."