INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Good Without God
More posts by this contributorIn June, TechCrunch Ethicist in Residence Greg M
Epstein attended EmTech Next, a conference organized by the MIT Technology Review
it means to work in technology ethically, within a capitalist system and market economy.Accompanying the story for Extra Crunch are a series
of in-depth interviews Greg conducted around the conference, with scholars, journalists, founders and attendees.Below, Greg speaks to two
academics who were key EmTech Next speakers
Ely Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, formed the basis for the opening presentation at the EmTech Next
conference.Susan Winterberg, an academic who studies business and ethics, was a panelist who brought important, even stirring insights about
the devastating impact automation can have on communities and how companies can succeed by protecting people against those effects.David
Autor is the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT
different audiences engage with it differently?David Autor: My primary audience, it can be argued, is other scholars
But I am aware of and pleased that my work has reached beyond that narrow group
what are the opportunities, what are the challenges.Could you help me to get a sense to the best of your knowledge of some of the key ways
management and business ownership roles and also by labor organizations or unions, etc.?I met twice with President Obama
I have spoken with many people in senior governmental policy positions
Labor folks were initially quite hostile to my work
I got a huge amount of pushback and have throughout my career, for example, from EPI, the Economic Policy Institute, which is sort of a
The guy who was their chief economist for a long time, Larry Mishel, started attacking my first papers before they were even published, and
receptivity to this discussion from many sides
There might have been a time in the U.S
because of mean bosses and politicians, but there are underlying economic forces that impact the work people do
I believe in the value of the market system
should move more in that direction
But those are all just variants of market economies
Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren were to call your office and say, all right, we want your perspective on how right
are we getting it, or where would you advise us to course correct in our economic message? What would you say?I met with Elizabeth Warren
I think some of what she has to say is great and some of it is dumb
terrible idea, just a huge transfer to the affluent
poor minority inner-city kids
I mean, I consider myself a progressive
And before I came to MIT, before I even went to grad school I spent several years working in nonprofits doing skills education for the poor
A lot of my work has been driven by that.What kind of skills education were you doing?I did computer skills training for the poor at a black
Methodist church in San Francisco for three years, and then I did related work as a volunteer in South Africa.
