Hi! Here are a few things that caught my eye this week (week of October 14, 2024).
1/ Jeremy Ney writes about why inequality matters. There are a bunch of reasons for this - the Golden Rule, lost Einsteins - but he argues that the number one reason why inequality is bad is that it reduces intergenerational mobility.
Source: Miles Corak
2/ While researching the broader AI for Good space, I find it helpful to ground things in data. (Although it is still mind boggling that we don't have data for 34 of the SDG targets!)
One statistic that's pretty wild is comparing the number of medical doctors per 10,000 people per country. Cuba ranks at the top of the list with 94.3 medical doctors per 10 K people and Central Africa Republic ranks the lowest with 0.21 medical doctors per 10 K people.
The following image compares this by region:
3/ Continuing with this theme, Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Simon Johnson (MIT), and James A. Robinson (University of Chicago) win the Nobel prize for economics for their research on inequality.
I remember reading Why Nations Fail years ago and discussing it with my Gates Foundation and IDEO colleagues in Delhi. I'm adding The Narrow Corridor and Power and Progress to my list now!
4/ I've been reflecting a lot on what it means to be a Good Neighbor and how technology might play a role (or not!). If we keep Nathan Schneider's point about "local fractals of impact" in mind, perhaps being a Good Neighbor can scaffold up into something beautiful. But I know one thing: my local Facebook group for my rural island is not a golden model of what it could be.
I've been reading New Public's work on this space and am particularly intrigued by Front Porch Forum, a platform based in Vermont.
Deborah Tien of Common Agency writes about what she's learned in bringing neighbors together IRL and online.
And I've been paying attention to the slew of digital deliberation efforts and research happening today:
- Citizen assemblies to guide the development of AI with Collective Intelligence Project and Anthropic
- Toward building deliberative digital media: from subversion to consensus by Sandy Pentland and Lily Tsai
- Stanford's Deliberative Democracy Lab
5/ And now for something on AI: Adobe releases Project Concept, an AI-first product that helps you quickly explore and remix different styles, compositions, and directions.
Creative tooling is such an interesting space to watch. Check out the video in their announcement post (but you may want to keep the sound off).
Ok! That's it for this week. See you soon.