Gunn Birkelund: Gender discrimination in hiring

Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, PhD in Sociology is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo (since 1999). Her main publications cover labour marke

Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 69, pp. 276-292, doi: 10.1016/j.trd.2019.02.008 Abstract Dedicated to show climate leadership, Sweden has committed to cut 70% of greenhouse-gas

Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, PhD in Sociology is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo (since 1999). Her main publications cover labour markeGender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women’s disadvantage in the labor market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By conducting the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers’ callbacks to fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included vary in a number of key institutional, economic and cultural dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, and no discrimination against men in Norway and the US. However, when we pooled the data, we found no significant differences across countries. Our findings suggest that although employers operate in quite different institutional contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more suitable anywhere.

Place: At the Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13, Stockholm, or online.REGISTERAbstractThe principle of neutrality can be seen as a direct response to the totalistapproach to evaluating popu

Katie Steele: Neutrality About Creating Good Lives - No Panacea For Longtermism

The principle of neutrality can be seen as a direct response to the totalist approach to evaluating populations of varying constitution and size: while the latter holds that the addition of a good lif

Markus Jäntti: Trends in absolute intergenerational income mobility in Sweden

Markus Jänttis research centers on income inequality, poverty, socio-economic mobility, and wealth inequality, especially in a cross-national perspective. He teaches econometrics and methods for inequ

Ai & Society. Curmudgeon paper Abstract There is a disturbing discrepancy between the AI ethics frameworks that highlight the technology’s ability to promote the social good and the relationship bet

Venue: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13 in Stockholm, or online. Research seminar with Joe Roussos, researcher in philosophy at the Institute for Futures Studies. He completed his PhD at

AI & Society (2020) Abstract An intelligent machine surpassing human intelligence across a wide set of skills has been proposed as a possible existential catastrophe (i.e., an event comparable in val

in: AI & SOCIETY  AbstractAn intelligent machine surpassing human intelligence across a wide set of skills has been proposed as a possible existential catastrophe (i.e., an event comparable in valueproductivedesires, or desires that can direct behavior across multiple contexts. However, productive desires cannotsui generisbe derived from non-productive desires. Thus, even though general agency in AI could in principle be created by human agents, general agency cannot be spontaneously produced by a non-general AI agent through an endogenous process (i.e. self-improvement). In conclusion, we argue that a common AI scenario, where general agency suddenly emerges in a non-general agent AI, such as DeepMind’s superintelligent board game AI AlphaZero, is not plausible.