Wirtschaftswoche editor-in-chief Miriam Meckel outlines the dangers of a future where human emotions and chance decisions are replaced by technological algorithms. In discussing Europe's refugee and debt crises, as well as in many other current battles of ideas, these calculations have buried serendipity and discovery in a way that threatens the liberal virtues of the Enlightenment.
A light lunch will be available starting at 11:45 p.m.
Drawing on ideas from her book “NEXT: Memories of a Future Without Us,” Wirtschaftswoche editor-in-chief Miriam Meckel outlines the dangers of a future where human emotions and chance decisions are replaced by technological algorithms. While the Enlightenment championed skepticism and intellectual exchange, our digital world of data-tracking, automatization, and personalization can create and harden impenetrable silos of opinions. In discussing Europe's refugee and debt crises, as well as in many other current battles of ideas, our information economy should facilitate a reasoned, diversified debate. But online, the algorithmic calculation of our preferences, desires, and next steps has all but buried serendipity, those enriching discoveries and thought-provoking insights that equip humans against blind absolutism and fixed dogmas. We must understand, if not counteract, this anti-social draft of a perfectly customized, targeted, commercial society that corrupts the media and betrays our liberal virtues of Enlightenment in Europe and beyond.
This event is made possible by the John F. Kennedy Memorial Policy Fellowship.
