Senior Policy Fellow in Ethics of Modelling and Simulation Dr Erica Thompson has been featured on the Pondering AI podcast.
This podcast is hosted by Kimberly Nevala of SAS and features a diverse group of thinkers and doers in order to explore how to create meaningful human experiences and make mindful decisions in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).
In an episode titled 'AI’s World View,' Erica exposes the seductive allure of model land: a place where life is simply predictable and all your assumptions are true. Erica shares her thoughts on topics such as AI, mathematical models and data-driven decision making.
The podcast begins with Erica sharing her background in mathematics and physics, which led to a move into climate change research and climate modeling. Erica's research has now broadened out focus on the predictability in models and their problems.
Since the spread of COVID-19, epidemiological and public health models have become topical and the podcast explores how these compare with modeling in other domains, using Erica's recent work on economic models, short-term weather models and longer-term climate models.
Erica also argues that here has to be accountability for model judgments, explaining how "chameleon models" cheat by taking credit for successes, but denying responsibility for failures.
Listen to the full podcast here. A transcript is available here.