Autumn 2015 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Anote Tong | Kiribati is in the front line of climate change. Despite Kiribati's best efforts at mitigation, relocation of its people may be the only long term option as the physical fabric of the country becomes uninhabitable. Anote Tong has been President of Kiribati since 2003, and steps down at the end of 2015 after meeting the term limits prescribed by the Kiribati Constitution. Climate change has been the defining issue of his Presidency. President Tong is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Robin Mansell (@REMVAN) is LSE Deputy Director and Provost and Professor of New Media and the Internet in the Department of Media and Communication.

Contributor(s): Dr Kate Devlin, Dr Mateja Jamnik, Professor Huw Price, Dr Mark Sprevak | AI is progressing fast. What level has it reached? Is human-level AI a realistic possibility? And if it is achieved in the near future, what will the consequences be for humanity? Could AI threaten our very existence? In this panel discussion, philosophers Huw Price and Mark Sprevak and computer scientists Mateja Jamnik and Kate Devlin discuss these and other questions concerning AI and the future of humanity. Kate Devlin is a Lecturer in Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Mateja Jamnik is Senior Lecturer in Computing at Cambridge. Huw Price is Professor of Philosophy, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Cambridge. Mark Sprevak is Senior Lecture of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Jonathan Birch is Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow. The Forum for European Philosophy (@ForumPhilosophy) is an educational charity that organises a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.

Contributor(s): Professor Wendy Carlin | The financial crisis triggered a fundamental rethinking of how economics students are taught and what they learn. An international collaborative project of economists (the CORE project), led by Wendy Carlin, has responded with a new curriculum that provides tools for engaging with the issues of economic inequality, environmental sustainability, innovation and wealth creation, and financial instability. Some policy shortcomings can be traced to a view – standard in undergraduate economics teaching – that the pursuit of self-interest in competitive markets is a sufficient guide to how society should allocate its resources. But this confidence in unregulated markets finds little support in recent economic research. In this new, empirically based view, instability, growing economic disparity and environmental destruction are not exceptions to the rule but rather the expected outcomes of an unregulated market economy. Fundamental changes have occurred, too, in economic knowledge of individual behaviour resulting in a growing recognition of the economic importance of ethical and other-regarding motives alongside self-interest. The tools of economics can be taught using new research insights and empirical results to address questions of importance to students, policy-makers and a broader public. Wendy Carlin is Professor of Economics at University College London, and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Robin Archer is Director of the Ralph Miliband Programme at LSE. The Ralph Miliband Programme (@rmilibandlse) is one of LSE's most prestigious lecture series and seeks to advance Ralph Miliband's spirit of free social inquiry.

Contributor(s): Vince Cable, Professor Diane Coyle, Bronwyn Curtis, Anna Leach | This event marks the official launch of the LSE Business Review blog bringing together a panel of prominent economists to discuss productivity, the UK’s economic future and the road ahead. Vince Cable (@vincecable) was MP for Twickenham from 1997-2015. He was the Liberal Democrat's chief economic spokesperson from 2003-2010, having previously served as Chief Economist for Shell from 1995-1997. He was Business Secretary under the Coalition Government from 2010-2015. He is the author of The Storm and his latest publication After The Storm. Diane Coyle, OBE (@diane1859), is a Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester. Until April 2015 she was vice-chairman of the BBC Trust, the BBC's governing body, and was previously a member of the Migration Advisory Committee and the Competition Commission. She began her career at the UK Treasury. Bronwyn Curtis is a global financial markets economist and a member of the LSE’s Court of Governors. She is a non-executive director of JP Morgan Asian Investment Trust and Scottish American Investment Trust. She was Head of Global Research at HSBC and Managing Editor of European Broadcast at Bloomberg LP. Anna Leach is head of the economic analysis team at CBI, overseeing the quarterly global macroeconomic forecast and the business surveys of economic conditions across the UK economy. Previously she worked in macroeconomic analysis at the Treasury and as a labour market economist at DWP, as well as undertaking a secondment to the Treasury Select Committee. John Van Reenan (@johnvanreenen) is a professor in the Department of Economics at LSE and director of LSE's Centre for Economic Performance. LSE Business Review (@LSEforBusiness) is an LSE-wide initiative to improve knowledge-exchange activities connecting social science researchers with business professionals in firms, enterprises and markets. The cross-disciplinary blog draws on contributions from LSE and other universities, business executives, consultants, think tanks and not-for-profit organisations.

Contributor(s): Professor Charles Taylor | Professor Charles Taylor will look at the constant temptation for modern democracies to veer towards exclusion. This is despite them being founded on a principle of inclusion, and is due to a weakness built into motivations which democracies draw upon. Having firmly established this context, Professor Taylor will discuss the exclusionary moves we have seen in many Western democracies which have targeted (unfamiliar) religions. Why this intense focus and how to overcome it? This lecture will focus mainly on the Quebec/Canadian situation, and will also point to the current parallels evident in many European countries today. Charles Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University. His recent works include: Modern Social Imaginaries, A Secular Age, and Laïcité et Liberté de Conscience (with Jocelyn Maclure). Professor Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. This event is co-organised with the Québec Government Office in London.