Technology

“We aren’t transforming technology into productivity the way we should be."
Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, discusses the impact of machine learning on our jobs and lives. What are policy makers doing – or not – to smooth the transition?

For more information go to: 
http://www.oecd.org/innovation/

Host: Kate Lancaster
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Erik Brynjolfsson on the disruptive power of machine learning

We talk a lot about the need to innovate, but how do schools encourage intuitive leaps and, ultimately, new inventions? Jamie Hyneman, formerly co-host of Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, says students need hands-on experience. Like the kind you get in LUT University’s prototype lab in Finland, the Jamie Hyneman Center.

Host: Clara Young
Sound engineer: Iván Porras Sepulveda
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

MythBusters alumnus Jamie Hyneman discusses the nuts & bolts of innovating

Everybody agrees that tech giants and all other businesses should pay their fair share of taxes where they create value. But is a digital tax the way to go? OECD tax chief Pascal Saint-Amans says no. The OECD has secured an agreement among 127 countries and jurisdictions to spearhead talks on changing the rules of the taxation game: shifting more taxing rights to market jurisdictions where goods and services—digital or not—are being consumed…away from the countries where multinational companies are headquartered. What’s at stake? Nothing short of changing fundamental tax rules to address the 21st century’s globalised and digitalising economy.

For more information, go to: 
http://www.oecd.org/tax/
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/taxation

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis 

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Digitalisation: “The global tax rules are changing.” – Pascal Saint-Amans, OECD tax chief

Machines are learning but who’s teaching them? You, me but also legions of microworkers all over the world.  Antonio Casilli is associate professor in digital humanities at Télécom ParisTech and researcher at the Edgar Morin Centre of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

The hidden underbelly of the digital economy–sociologist Antonio Casilli weighs in.

Encouraging women and girls to pursue studies in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) is one thing, getting them to patent their innovations and take them from lab to market is another. Fiona Murray is the Associate Dean of Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Co-Director of MIT’s Initiative for Innovation. She talks about women getting in the CEO seat and revving up the innovation engine.

For more information, go to: 
www.oecd.org/gender

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis 

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

MIT’s Fiona Murray on women in tough tech

Most people spend their evenings kicking back with a book or whatever’s on Netflix. In Finland, they’re teaching themselves artificial intelligence (AI). Computer scientist Teemu Roos talks about the easy-to-follow massive online course on machine learning he designed with tech firm Reaktor. And which the Finnish government bank-rolled. Teemu Roos is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki. 

For more information, go to: 
https://www.oecd.org/science
https://www.elementsofai.com/

Host: Clara Young    
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Why everyone in Finland’s teaching themselves AI. Teemu Roos, U of Helsinki, tells us.

Anthony Gooch is head of OECD’s Public Affairs and Communications and director of OECD Forum. Now in its 20th year, the Forum is OECD’s annual thinkfest, bringing together public figures, academics, corporate leaders, and a whole host of people working to shape better policies and better lives. In this conversation, we talk about fragile trust, the hope of civic tech, and the complicated relationship between facts and feelings.

For more information on the OECD Forum and to join the debate:
https://www.oecd-forum.org/

Host: Clara Young 
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

OECD’s Anthony Gooch on facts, fakes, the Forum, and the hope of civic tech

Technology can be scary - are our digital assistants spying on us? Will robots steal our jobs? Change is challenging, says Sodexo's Belen Moscoso del Prado, but technology itself isn't to blame. How we use technology is what matters - and it can be positive force for people and companies alike. She explains how Sodexo - like many firms today - is adapting to the digital transformation and what this has meant for the company, its employees and clients.

Host: Kate Lancaster
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

We need to demystify digitalisation, says Belen Moscoso del Prado

European Commission anti-trust chief Margrethe Vestager has taken on many a superstar firm, bringing sizeable fines against the likes of Google and Apple. Her philosophy? Ordinary people deserve a fair shake. That means the fair prices and consumer leverage market competition is supposed to ensure. Smart regulation is key but tech giants must step up to the plate and take responsibility. 

Host: Clara Young    
Producer: Robin Allison Davis    
Sound engineer: Ivan Porras Sepulveda

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Margrethe Vestager on looking out for the little guy & the bigger picture of digital competition

Until 1984, computer science in the US was full of women mathematicians and programmers, and then it all changed. What happened?  Claire L. Evans, author of the book, Broad Band: The Untold Story of Women Who Made the Internet, tells a story that hadn't been told before of the many women who helped found and formed the internet-- women like Ada Lovelace, the original mother of computing, and Dame Wendy Hall, who invented a new system of hypertext that could have changed the way the World Wide Web functions.

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Claire Evans on how women made the internet

In an ideal market economy, there are lots of companies of roughly the same size who compete against each other. Consumers benefit from choice and lower prices. In today's digital economy, however, there are a small number of extremely powerful tech companies, and evidence that competition is not what it should be. Casper Klynge, Denmark's – and the world's – first tech ambassador, explains.

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Getting Big Tech to play fair: Denmark’s Casper Klynge

Digital assistants, big data, biometric scanning, augmented virtual and mixed reality – all of these things and more are changing how we work. Raphael Gielgen, trend scouter on the future of work at the Swiss design firm, Vitra, talks about how the workplace is keeping up with technology.

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

The office of the future…now with Vitra’s Raphael Gielgen

Propaganda and disinformation have been around since at least the ancient Romans. Now, false and falsified information spreads rapidly and we have social media platforms and mass messaging systems to thank for that. Hossein Derakhshan, media analyst and co-author of the 2017 report "Information Disorder" published by the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center, explains how we can counter disinformation and why he doesn't like the term "fake news". 

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Fake check: Hossein Derakhshan on information warfare

There are many forces at work splintering the digital public sphere. Automated bots flood the internet with disinformation, creating confusion. Online abuse is another way of shutting down civil dialogue. Seyi Akiwowo is a crusader for a safer cyberspace. She founded Glitch in 2017 after enduring online abuse.

www.fixtheglitch.org

Host: Clara Young
Producer: Robin Allison Davis

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Trolling, doxxing & swatting: how online abuse is destroying the civic cybersphere

Machine learning, or artificial intelligence, can be traced back to the 1950s, but really leapt forward in the last decade or so thanks to more powerful computing. AI is at the wheel when it comes to driverless cars, and is used by farmers to monitor crops, and by the police to solve crime. It has promise in health care too, including to better detect COVID-19. Could AI go too far, as machines teach machines, and even learning human emotions and tastes, yet with very little control by human beings. Policymakers are now taking AI seriously, to safeguard public interests, and to develop AI sensibly, as well as intelligently. 

The OECD AI Observatory is working to help make sure that AI does not evolve alone and keeps the human touch. 

To find out more, go to www.oecd.ai

Hosts: Robin Allison Davis, Shayne Maclachlan, Clara Young
Producer: Rory Clarke, Robin Allison Davis
Guests: 
Audrey Plonk, Head of OECD Digital Economy Policy Division, 
Kathleen Walch, Cognilytica Principal Analyst, 
Jack Clark, Open AI Head of Policy

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

All about AI: Should we be concerned about artificial intelligence?

Shoshana Zuboff is the author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: A Fight for a Human Future and the New Frontier of Power. Her book's release is very timely considering the impact of COVID-19. Collection and use of private data have expanded, bringing privacy concerns even further to the fore. What does the digital acceleration in this pandemic mean for our future? Shoshana Zuboff spoke with Anthony Gooch, Director of the OECD's Public Affairs and Communications directorate, for a podcast hosted during OECD's 2020 Forum Virtual Events to mark the OECD's 60th anniversary. 

Host: Anthony Gooch
Interviewee: Shoshana Zuboff, author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: A Fight for a Human Future and the New Frontier of Power"
Producers: Robin Allison Davis, Samia Basille

Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters
Follow us on social media: www.oecd.org/social-media

Technology

Anindita MUKHERJEE