Our society is more unequal than ever, as the top 1% control over 44% of the world’s wealth while 689 million people are living on less than $1.90 per day. In this episode, we asked our guests what the future of fairness, justice, and equality should look like, and how their research can help to bring about a fairer society. Alexa Hagerty and Natalie Jones shared how injustice can be thought of as an existential risk to humanity, while Esra Ozyurek introduced us to the importance of understanding that different people have different needs, making equality insufficient to bring about justice. We cover topics ranging from distributive justice, the virtues and vices of empathy, and the role AI will play in shaping equality in the years to come.
This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2.
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Timestamps
[00.00]- Introductions
[02.07]- what do we mean by fair when it comes to societies?
[03.28]- fairness as contributions
[05:00]- Justice requiring a plurality of understandings of peoples’ wants and needs
[05:58]- deficit model of justice
[06:45]- the difference between fairness, justice, and equality
[07:53]- justice is the most powerful out of the three concepts
[08:45]- The downside of empathy
[10:18]- being empathetic can encode a problematic power dynamic
[12:50]- who gets to feel compassionate is unequal in political dialogues
[13:13]- cognitive empathy and emotional empathy distinction
[13:50]- Time for recap 1: summary so far
[15:00]- the deficit model in more detail
[15:54]- example of medical needs explaining the difference between justice, fairness, and equality
[17:35]- cognitive empathy recap and explanation
[18: 15]- inequality and existential risk
[19:34]- existential risks can be localised to particular civilizations e.g. the threat of climate change and colonization
[20:21]- how to link global injustice and different voices to existential risk
[20:44]- participatory futures intro
[21:21]-global justice causing existential risk
[23:22]- we are all in the same boat but on different decks.
[24:24]- COVID-19 vaccine distributions and justice
[25:13]- Time for recap 2: summary so far
[26:49]- participatory futures explanation
[28:05]- AI can impact inequality and injustice
[28:59]- algorithmic red lining
[30:11]- AI displacing workers of certain skill sets
[31:13]- AI and the platform economy
[32:37]- AI perpetuates inequalities, multiplies inequalities, and creates new inequalities
[33:29]- facial recognition, skin colour, and questions of whether it would be just to implement facial recognition tech across societies
[35:20]- AI having liberatory potential
[36:43]- the importance of the underlying structure within which AI is used
[37:57]- the materiality of...
