Latest 300 | LSE Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Tembeka Ngcukaitobi | The lecture will explore South Africa's complex relationship with the idea of human rights. Drawing from the struggle to end apartheid, the lecture will explore the connections between the struggle for human rights and the idea of self-determination. While both ideas are local, the lecture will show that they are also global. South Africa remains a feature of the global world order, trying, as one of its most talented sons, Steve Bantu Biko once said "to give the world a more human face".

Contributor(s): Reid Hoffman | Artificial Intelligence is not only a generational technology, but also a general purpose technology—one that has outsized potential to transform societies and economies globally. How should we use AI to not only better understand the world, but organise, develop, and elevate it?

Contributor(s): Professor Adam Oliver | In his inaugural lecture, Adam Oliver will describe how he became involved in, and has helped contribute towards the development of, the still relatively new field of behavioural public policy (BPP). He will briefly detail how the intellectual architecture of the field – i.e. its journal, Annual International Conference and Association – came into existence, and allude to his hopes for how BPP might develop in the future. Namely, that more liberal, autonomy-respecting frameworks emerge to at least co-exist on equal terms with the paternalistic frameworks that have dominated the field to date.

Contributor(s): Professor Mirca Madianou | In this talk based on her new book, Mirca Madianou will argue that digital innovations such as biometrics and chatbots engender new forms of violence and entrench power asymmetries between the global south and north. Drawing on ten years of research on the uses of digital technologies in humanitarian operations, Madianou will unearth the colonial power relations which shape ‘technology for good’ initiatives. The notion of technocolonialism captures how the convergence of digital infrastructures with humanitarian bureaucracy, state power and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial legacies. Technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that digital infrastructures, data and AI play in accentuating inequities between aid providers and people in need.