Research Archive

July 27, 2023

Perspective: Can artificial intelligence teach us to be better workers?

So-called ‘soft skills’ are in short supply in the workforce and society at large. AI could help us get better A few weeks ago, McKinsey & Company published updated estimates on when key anticipated characteristics of artificial intelligence might arrive — including things like creativity, logical reasoning, and social/emotional reasoning, sensing and output. McKinsey’s timeline for increased capacity across a range of such capabilities…

By Brent Orrell

July 21, 2023

Government-Supported Job Training in the US: Paths Toward Reforming the Workforce

By Brent Orrell | Peter Mueser | Kenneth Troske

July 21, 2023

Government-Supported Job Training in the US: Paths Toward Reforming The Workforce

By Brent Orrell | Peter Mueser | Kenneth Troske

July 14, 2023

Do We Need a Reboot? Challenging Prevailing Narratives on AI

It is hard at times to tell which is likely to be more disruptive: artificial intelligence (AI) or the multiplying efforts to regulate this powerful, potentially transformational, and highly beneficial technology. With multiple calls for pauses and increasing calls for new regulation, we are clearly at a critical moment in a debate that could either…

By Brent Orrell | Shane Tews

July 7, 2023

With Affirmative Action Gone, We Should Focus Admissions Policies on Poverty

If history is any guide, Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard won’t mark the end of the struggle over the constitutionality of race-conscious policies. It won’t even mark the beginning of the end. Most likely, it will just be another in a long series of inflection points. To borrow from one of the…

By Brent Orrell

June 28, 2023

Yes, College Is Still a Good Investment

A four-year degree still pays dividends—but now’s a great time for young people to snap up some on-the-job experience, too. Another graduation season is in the books. Some students have finished high school and are thinking about their next steps while others have just finished college and are wondering if it was worth it. They…

By Brent Orrell

June 22, 2023

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

Event Summary On June 22, AEI’s Brent Orrell and Shane Tews were joined by Rob Reich of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Jeremy M. Weinstein of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies to discuss System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot (Harper Academic, 2021), a book…

By Brent Orrell | Shane Tews

June 13, 2023

Is There an AI Gender Gap?

Gender gaps are one of the defining characteristics of our age. In a wide variety of educational, social, and work settings, women increasingly out-perform men. Women attend college at higher rates and appear to be succeeding in a work environment where so-called “soft-skills” predominate.  There’s one area, however, where men are stepping out ahead of women: the adoption and…

By Brent Orrell

June 7, 2023

How ‘Negativity Bias’ Skews the Conversation About Artificial Intelligence

Just as I was preparing an article titled “Calm Down About Artificial Intelligence”—one in a series—Marc Andreesen has preempted me with an 18-page blog post inventorying the main threads in the “AI doom-loop” and why these concerns are either wrong or substantially overblown. In fairness, Andreesen is open to the criticism that he is engaging in…

By Brent Orrell

June 1, 2023

Will Chat Tech Help the Neuro-Divergent Find Their Place in Society?

The lament that digital technologies and social media are contributing to an epidemic of loneliness and conflict is ubiquitous. Whether these technologies caused or exacerbated these challenges is hard to unpack. My view is America’s sociability crisis was already advanced before Facebook, Twitter and other technology companies figured out how to monetize loneliness by providing…

By Brent Orrell