Six challenges for the social sciences: frontier technologies

How can frontier technologies such as AI, robotics, nano and quantum computing, be harnessed to accelerate positive change while limiting their potential for harm?

Technological developments are changing our social, economic, and political systems at a pace that outstrips our capacity to understand, govern, or guide them. Public debate is dominated by speculation about futures that may never arrive: AI that destroys humanity, or solves all its problems; robots that replace or supplement humans; chemicals that kill or save billions. The choices that shape these possibilities are being made right now, about technologies that are already here and already reshaping how we work, communicate, transact, make decisions, and govern. The central challenges and opportunities are social, economic, and institutional. The technologies matter not simply because of what they can do, but because of how they are developed, deployed, and used, which determines whether they improve well-being or cause harm. Figuring out what these choices ought to be and how to make them are wholly matters of social science, the disciplines that help us understand how technologies reshape institutions, markets, workplaces, communities, and political systems, and how their benefits and risks are and can be distributed across society. What interventions are available to policymakers, regulators, civil society, and the research community to shape the evolving relationship between technology and society in the public interest? The choices made now about how we develop, deploy, and govern new technologies will determine how their benefits and harms are distributed. Social science has a central role to play in informing those choices and ensuring that technological change serves the public interest.

Meet our speakers and chair

Helen Margetts is Director of the LSE Data Science Institute, and Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Department of Government. She has researched and written extensively about the relationship between technology, politics, public policy, and government, publishing over 150 articles and six books, including Political Turbulence: how social media shape collective action (Princeton University Press) which won the Political Studies Association’s WJM Mackenzie prize for best politics book in 2017. She is currently completing her seventh book, AI and Digital Era Governance, which examines how government’s capabilities, position within society, and ability to meet external challenges are all critically shaped by digital change.

Luis Garicano is Professor in the School of Public Policy at LSE and co-author of Messy Jobs: The Work That AI Cannot Reach. His research focuses on the impact of organization and technology on aggregate economic variables like the wage distribution, productivity, or economic growth. He has studied why organizations and institutions fail and how to better design them. He has also studied how specific digital technologies are transforming the economy, such as for instance business to business electronic commerce, portable computing, enterprise resource planning or blockchain. His research has shown that it is the interaction between technology and its implementation, through organisational change, that really matters to induce productivity and change. His more recent research has studied how to build better institutions in Europe to avoid new economic crisis in the Eurozone.

Patrick Sturgis is Professor of Quantitative Social Science in the Department of Methodology at LSE. His research focuses on survey and statistical methods and their application to understanding social and political behaviour. He was Director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) 2009 to 2019 and President of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) from 2011 to 2015. He chaired the Methodological Advisory Committee of the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (2012-2016), and is Chair of the Methodological Advisory Committee of the European Social Survey. He chaired the British Polling Council/Market Research Society Inquiry into the failure of the 2015 UK election polls and served as Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Political Polling and Digital Media. He is an editorial board member of Public Opinion Quarterly, Survey Research Methods, and International Journal of Social Research Methods.

Larry Kramer has been President and Vice Chancellor of LSE since April 2024. A constitutional scholar, university administrator, and philanthropic leader, he was previously the President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dean of Stanford Law School.

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This event is hosted by the Data Science Institute.

Other events in the series are on 18 January, 8 February, 1 March, 8 March and 22 March.

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