UPCOMING SEMINARS
Explore the themes of our upcoming seminars and click on speakers' names to learn more about them.
A JUST TRANSITION TO NET-ZERO EMISSIONS IN LATIN AMERICA: WHY, AND HOW
10 March 2022, 1:00 p.m., Mexico City
Latin-American aims to reach carbon neutrality. The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) of every nation, commits the region to reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and sets targets for emissions to be reduced progressively over time. To comply with the goals of these NDCs, each country must consider a set of complex sectoral transformations, such as closing coal-fired power plants, promoting electric mobility, and increasing forest captures which, taken together, could bring emissions down to zero. However, these transformations are subject to a wide range of economic, environmental, and technological uncertainties. This talk will describe IDB research that identifies options for making NDC's sectoral transformations more robust against an uncertain future.
PAST SEMINARS
ADVANCING THE SCIENCE OF COMPLEX ADAPTIVE HUMAN-EARTH SYSTEMS THROUGH MULTISECTOR DYNAMICS
10 February 2022, 1:00 p.m., Mexico City
The field of MultiSector Dynamics (MSD) offers a perspective that bridges sectors, and disciplines to identify dynamic and adaptive pathways for societal transitions. This talk will introduce a recently published vision report by the MSD Community of Practice, funded by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Convergent research is central to this vision, bringing together concepts and methods from multiple international research communities, expanding open science capacities, and leveraging revolutions in data and computing. MSD aims to support major societal transformations and goals by advancing complex adaptive human-Earth systems science through the development of tools and methods that help us trace the co-evolutionary pathways of human and Earth systems.
THE FUTURE OF A.I. FOR SOCIAL GOOD
25 November 2021, 1:00 p.m., Mexico City
The Future of A.I. for Social Good. The A.I. Industry has powered a futuristic reality of self-driving cars and voice assistants to help us with almost any need. However, the A.I. Industry has also created systematic challenges. For instance, while it has led to platforms where workers label data to improve machine learning algorithms, my research has uncovered that these workers earn less than minimum wage. We are also seeing the surge of A.I. algorithms that privilege certain populations and racially exclude others. If we were able to fix these challenges we could create greater societal justice and enable A.I. that better addresses people’s needs, especially groups we have traditionally excluded.
In this talk, I will discuss some of these urgent global problems that my research has uncovered from the A.I. Industry. I will present how we can start to address these problems through my proposed "A.I. For Good" framework. My framework uses value sensitive design to understand people's values and rectify harm. I will present case-studies where I use this framework to design A.I. systems that improve the labor conditions of the workers operating behind the scenes in our A.I. industry; as well as how we can use this framework to safeguard our democracies. I conclude by presenting a research agenda for studying the impact of A.I. in society; and researching effective socio-technical solutions in favor of the future of work and countering techno-authoritarianism
RI5C: A FRAMEWORK TO EVALUATE CRYPTOCURRENCY SYSTEMS AND A REVIEW OF ACADEMIC INFLUENCE IN THE SPACE.
7 October 2021, 2:00 p.m., Mexico City
Just over 10 years after the genesis of Bitcoin, the first crypto-enabled digital asset, we have seen a new category of financial assets emerge. With this, a large number of cryptocurrencies have generated a highly liquid secondary market. The value of this cryptocurrency-based asset market has grown enormously, reaching its historical maximum of $ 829 million, equivalent to the gross domestic product of Mexico in 2005. In this seminar Dr. Barojas will present an evaluation model for these systems of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, in the form of an original software tool distributed under an open source license.