The implications of AI for global security are frequently discussed. This talk will focus on a related but less thoroughly examined subject: the role machine learning could play in revolutionising the study of international affairs. By enabling sophisticated analysis of messy, high-dimensional, real-world data, such techniques could bring new predictive modeling abilities to the social sciences and, by extension, the practice of governance, potentially unlocking new forms of institutional design.

Financial sectors across Africa are transforming rapidly, deepening and diversifying, and forging new links across the continent and with global capital markets. Is growing financial integration a breakthrough for economic transformation on the continent? Do these trends pose new risks of financial instability, and growing public indebtedness? What is unique about financial sector development in Africa, and what can be learned from other regions?

Secretary of Defence James Mattis recently said of artificial intelligence: “I’m certainly questioning my original premise that the fundamental nature of war will not change. You’ve got to question that now. I just don’t have the answers yet.”
Vladimir Putin stated: “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind.” .. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

Debates over redistribution, social insurance, and market regulation are central to American politics. Why do some citizens prefer a large role for government in the economic life of the nation while others wish to limit its reach? In Open versus Closed, my co-authors and I argue that these preferences are not always what they seem. We show how deep-seated personality traits underpinning the culture wars over race, immigration, law and order, sexuality, gender roles, and religion shape how citizens think about economics, binding cultural and economic inclinations together in unexpected ways.

Debates over redistribution, social insurance, and market regulation are central to American politics. Why do some citizens prefer a large role for government in the economic life of the nation while others wish to limit its reach? In Open versus Closed, my co-authors and I argue that these preferences are not always what they seem. We show how deep-seated personality traits underpinning the culture wars over race, immigration, law and order, sexuality, gender roles, and religion shape how citizens think about economics, binding cultural and economic inclinations together in unexpected ways.

Dr. Clare Chambers is University Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Philosophy at Jesus College, Cambridge. She has published widely in contemporary political philosophy and is the author of three books: Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (Penn State University Press, 2008); Teach Yourself Political Philosophy: A Complete Introduction (Hodder, 2012, with Phil Parvin); and, most recently, Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State (OUP, 2017).

The two-day conference will provide a constructive forum for graduate students to present high-quality work in political theory, exchange ideas with peers, and receive feedback from leading academics in the field. The keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr. Clare Chambers, University Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.

This one-day conference explores how the costs of war have been defined by policymakers, combatants, and societies, as well as by scholars and commentators. The papers will reflect comparatively on definitions of cost, as well as examining the impact, meaning and perception of costs in human, social, political, financial, economic, environmental, technological, moral and symbolic terms.

Programme:

9.00 - Welcome: Guillaume Piketty and Peter H. Wilson
9.15 - Session 1 |Chair: Guillaume Piketty

The main objective of this paper is to provide localized evidence about the mechanisms that may link oil wealth with the use of armed force against civilians by non-state armed groups in Colombia. Violence is studied in all three of the standard dimensions: onset, duration and intensity. This paper reports evidence on a subnational variant of a mechanism termed by the literature state-as-target.