Vilas Dhar, president of the Patrick McGovern Foundation and a leading voice on global AI policy, discusses how rapid and profound technological advancements, particularly in artificial intelligence, are reshaping society at an unprecedented pace. He highlights the need to move from reactive to anticipatory policy approaches, focusing on equity, dignity, and inclusivity. Dhar stresses the risks posed by AI, including its potential misuse and the dangers of concentrated power in homogeneous decision-making circles. He calls for embedding ethics into technology design and fostering participatory governance, while also emphasizing the importance of broad digital literacy so that all stakeholders can actively shape the future of technology. He also argues for public investment in technology development to create inclusive outcomes. At the heart of the discussion is a call for a moral economy that prioritizes human agency, rights, and shared prosperity, ensuring that technological progress aligns with human values. This requires a rejection of simplistic narratives and a deeper understanding of the complex implications of AI.

How can these goals be achieved? Find out in his conversation with Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences.

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Daron Acemoglu, the newly minted Nobel prize laureate in Economics and distinguished Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), debunks for us some long-standing assumptions about technology, productivity, and shared prosperity. Benefits do not automatically tickle down from industry to workers. Distributive gains take inclusive institutions and a calibrated approach that creates greater competition, changes the norms in the industry, and deals specifically with market failures via a host of incentives, subsidies, taxes, and regulations. In the case of the tech industry, that starts with a vision that is pro-worker and pro-democratic – the opposite of what Acemoglu characterizes as the current Silicon Valley equilibrium. Finally, we are asked to think very critically about some of the trending policy solutions. Universal basic income is not the silver bullet some see it to be. Data value and its distribution, on the other hand, deserve great attention. Data is going to be as important as land is to production. How do we treat it as such? Find answers in his discussion with Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences.

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Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of the Science journals, talks to us about major trends in science and how they affect us all. He begins by saying that populism and polarisation are taking hold of science. Belonging to a group – be it political, faith-based or any other – becomes more important than the truth and scientific fact. Taking refuge in the laboratory and its rationality is no longer an option. Science needs to tailor its communication to the publics and, importantly, to step up its engagement with policy. That is not a zero-cost shift. Concrete incentives are needed not only to trigger the right reforms in our traditional structures of science and government, but also to counteract current incentives for active disinformation. And, more than ever, social sciences need to help us navigate the trends and understand the experiments run on global populations in real time.

How all this is to be achieved? Find out in his discussion with Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences.

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