Incentive Structures: Mechanisms of Control

Presented at The Fifth HOPE (2004), July 10, 2004, 2 p.m. (60 minutes).

Where do incentive structures come from? How do political elites use incentives to make us die for them? How do market elites use incentives to control politicians and co-opt the media? How can we stop them from doing the same to computing and communications technology? Why does mankind have to be led through the desert for 40 years every time technology advances? How are cultural and religious values like computer code and the institutions they create analogous to programs? How are markets like the AIs in The Matrix? When mechanisms of control get out of control, we have to ask who really coded Agent Smith and how can we retain control of technology before it comes to that?


Presenters:

  • Jason Kroll
    Jason Kroll arrived at the present through a C64-Amiga-Mac-Linux trajectory. He even spent his dotcom year as the technical editor of Linux Journal. The crash sent him back to complete his B.A. in economics at the University of Washington and he is now finishing his M.S. in computer science at Tufts. His research interests are mostly machine learning and game theory, but he finds it hard to focus on research with the world in its current state.

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