A conversation with Lea Ypi: Indignity - A Life Reimagined
We welcome back Lea Ypi, professor and award-winning author of the book Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. Now she returns to present her new book, Indignity: A Life Reimagined. In this work, she investigates the truth about her family's past by tracing the steps of her grandmother through the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. Indignity is both about Ypi's personal journey, and about survival in an age of extremes, about what we can truly know about those closest to us, and about the moral authority with which we can judge the acts of previous generations.Moderator: Gustaf Arrhenius, professor of practical philosophy and director of the Institute for Futures Studies. If you are curious about Lea's research for this new book, listen to the talk she gave in our research seminar series in 2023.If you are interested in listening to the conversation Lea had with Gustaf on her book Free, click here.
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Jason Tucker: Why We Need to Talk About the Global Politics of AI and Healthcare
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is frequently promoted as a solution to a broad range of global healthcare challenges. However, behind this promise lies a more complex reality. The development and deployment of AI in healthcare is increasingly intertwined with geopolitical tensions, power asymmetries, and structural dependencies that carry real-world consequences. This seminar examines the most pressing areas where global politics is shaping the current and future role of AI in healthcare. It does so by drawing on the conceptual and empirical findings from Dr. Jason Tucker’s ongoing research project, The Politics of AI and Health: From Snake Oil to Social Good.Research seminar with Jason Tucker, researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the AI Policy Lab, the Department of Computing Science, Umeå University. He is also a Visting Research Fellow at AI & Society, the Department of Technology and Society, LTH, Lund University.
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Artificial General Intelligence: A Manifesto, with Anandi Hattiangadi
The race is on to produce artificial general intelligence (AGI)—machines that are at least as intelligent as humans—despite widespread concern that an AGI would pose an existential threat to humankind.The fundamental problem is that much research on AGI is premised on the mistaken assumption that for a machine to be as intelligent as a human requires no more than that it produces intelligent behaviour. So, what is most likely to happen in the near future is that we will create an ersatz-AGI: a machine that is capable of mimicking intelligent behaviour, without having the capacities constitutive of human intelligence—most notably, without any capacity for moral action.In order to develop a true AGI, we need to revisit philosophical questions about the nature and requirements of distinctively human intelligence. The trouble is that the existing philosophical models of human cognition have major shortcomings. I sketch a novel account of the nature of distinctively human intelligence, and a blueprint for the construction of a true and moral AGI: a machine with the cognitive capacities constitutive of human intelligence, including the capacity for moral action.Research seminar with Anandi Hattiangadi, professor of philosophy at Stockholm University and a researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. She is currently an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, where she is a participant in the AI and Humanity Project.Sign up to our newsletter Upcoming seminars
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Lea Ypi on Indignity - Can Beauty Save the World? - Injustice, Reconciliation, Aesthetic Education
'Beautiful world! Where hast thou gone?" asks Friedrich Schiller in his famous poem The Gods of Greece. He laments the loss of harmony in a world divided by injustice both past and present. In this lecture, Lea Ypi reads from her forthcoming book on human dignity. In it, she reflects on the relationship between politics and art by focusing on historical injustice and its legacy in a divided world. Through the life of her grandmother, Leman Ypi, she travels from the utopia of classical Greek unity described by Schiller to the dystopia of her own past. A journey that begins in 1918 in Saloniki a few years before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and ends in 2005 in Tirana, just over a decade after the fall of communism.Research seminar from 2024 with Lea Ypi, Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the Australian National University.Watch also: Lea Ypi in conversation with Gustaf Arrhenius: On democracy and freedom with the author of "Free"
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Public vs. Private Healthcare in the OECD Area - An Evaluation of Performance, with Per Molander
Healthcare systems can be categorised along the public/private axis into two main types: publicly administered systems and systems based on compulsory health insuranceprovided by the private sector. This study compares the efficiency of these two models across the 38 member countries of the OECD, utilising a broad spectrum of performance indicators developed by the OECD secretariat. On average, performance improves with an increase in healthcare budgets; however, further enhancements come at rising costs. There is no evidence supporting the hypothesis that transitioning from a publicly administered system to a privately dominated system will enhance efficiency. By contrast, there is strong evidence that overall efficiency increases with the public share of financing. These conclusions also hold true for the more restricted group of OECD countries in Europe.Research seminar with Per Molander, PhD in control engineering and Bachelor's in mathematics, literature, etc. Throughout his career, he has worked on applying research in the political decision-making process within areas such as fiscal policy institutions, social insurance, environmental, and food policy. This has been done from various positions within and close to the Government Offices and as Director-General for Inspektionen för socialförsäkringen. He has also worked internationally as an advisor to, among others, the World Bank, IMF, and OECD.Sign up to our newsletter: https://www.iffs.se/en/about-us/newsletter/ Upcoming seminars: https://www.iffs.se/en/calendar/
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