With consideration to the events of the past week and in order to hold space for the voices that are boldly challenging systemic racism and injustice, we have decided to postpone the release of our new episode. We would also like to echo the sentiment expressed by Carnegie Mellon's President Farnam Jahanian, that it is up to each one of us – no matter our background – to confront and dismantle racism and injustice wherever they exist.

Can teams still be effective when working together remotely? Is working from home the future of work? In this week’s episode, hosts Eugene and Lauren talk to Professor Anita Williams Woolley of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business to learn about how communication and collaboration change once teams are no longer face-to-face, and we hear from people in a variety of fields about their experience working remotely.

In the span of just two weeks, the entire American higher education system moved online due to COVID-19. While this is often considered a temporary measure, the truth is that higher ed may never fully go back to normal. And in some regards, we may not want it to. In this week’s episode, hosts Eugene and Lauren talk to professors across the United States about the future of higher education.

How will certain new standards for data sharing and surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic impact the future of healthcare? In episode two of Consequential's two-part deep-dive on pandemics, public health and privacy, hosts Eugene and Lauren talk to David S. Jones of Harvard University and Henry Kautz of the National Science Foundation about the impact of big data on health and privacy.

Mobile data records, tracking devices and government-mandated selfies have played a role in both enforcing quarantines and providing data to better understand the coronavirus. In this week’s episode, we talk to Wilbert Van Panhuis, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh; Tom Mitchell, the Block Center’s Lead Technologist; and Scott Andes, the Block Center’s Executive Director, about the challenges of balancing public health and the value of privacy. 

In light of recent developments related to COVID-19, we have decided to push back our second season to focus instead on what we can learn from the coronavirus in terms of technology and society. In our mini-season, we will cover the use of large-scale public health data, remote education, and the future of work. 

Over the last 9 episodes, we’ve presented a variety of questions and concerns relating to the impacts of technology, specifically focusing on artificial intelligence. To end season 1, we want to take a step back and lay out a policy roadmap that came together from the interviews and research we conducted. We will outline over 20 different steps and actions that policymakers can take, starting with laying the necessary foundations to applying regulatory frameworks from other industries to...

Don’t worry, your next doctor probably isn’t going to be a robot. But as healthcare tech finds its way into both the operating room and your living room, we’re going to have to answer the kinds of difficult ethical questions that will also determine how these technologies could be used in other sectors. We will also discuss the importance of more robust data-sharing practices and policies to drive innovation in the healthcare sector.

If artificial intelligence can do certain tasks better than we can, what does that mean for the concept of work as we know it? We will cover human-AI collaboration in the workplace: what it might look like, what it could accomplish and what policy needs to be put in place to protect the interests of workers.

The World Economic Forum has found that while automation could eliminate 75 million jobs by 2022, it could also create 133 million new jobs. In this episode, we will look at how to prepare potentially displaced workers for these new opportunities. We will also discuss the “overqualification trap” and how the Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing hiring and credentialing processes.

If you think about any piece of pop culture about the future, it takes place in a city.  Whether we realize it or not, when we imagine the future, we picture cities, and that idea is all the more problematic when it comes to who benefits from technological change and who does not. This episode will look at how emerging technologies can keep communities connected, rather than widen divides or leave people behind.

Big data disrupted the entertainment industry by changing the ways that people develop, distribute and access content, and it may soon do the same for education. New technologies are changing education, both within and beyond the classroom, as well as opening up more accessible learning opportunities. However, without reform in our infrastructure, this ed-tech might not reach the people who need it the most.

Everyone has a different definition of what fairness means - including algorithms. As municipalities begin to rely on algorithmic decision-making, many of the people impacted by these AI systems may not intuitively understand how those algorithms are making certain crucial choices. How can we foster better conversation between policymakers, technologists and communities their technologies affect?

Every time you order a shirt, swipe on a dating app or even stream this podcast, your data is contributing to the growing digital architecture that powers artificial intelligence. But where does that leave you? In our deep-dive on data subjects, we discuss how to better inform and better protect the people whose data drives some of the most central technologies today.

Inside the black box, important decisions are being made that may affect the kinds of jobs you apply for and are selected for, the candidates you’ll learn about and vote for, or even the course of action your doctor might take in trying to save your life. However, when it comes to figuring out how algorithms make decisions, it’s not just a matter of looking under the hood.

Are the robots coming for your job? The answer isn’t quite that simple. We look at what’s real and what’s hype in the narrative of industry disruption, how we might be able to better predict future technological change and how artificial intelligence will change our understanding of the nature of intelligence itself.

Our future isn’t a coin flip. In an age of artificial intelligence and increasing automation, Consequential looks at our digital future and discusses what’s significant, what’s coming and what we can do about it. Over the course of our first season, hosts Lauren Prastien and Eugene Leventhal will unpack the narrative of technological change in conversation with leading technologists, ethicists, economists and everything in between.