Irving Wladawsky-Berger

How to Diversify Admissions to Elite Private Colleges

“After the Covid pandemic made it difficult for high school students to take the SAT and ACT, dozens of selective colleges dropped their requirement that applicants do so,” wrote David Leonhardt in “The Misguided War on the SAT,” a recent NY Times article. “Colleges described the move as temporary, but nearly all have since stuck to a test-optional policy. It reflects a backlash against standardized tests that began long before the pandemic, and many people have hailed the change as a victory for equity in higher education.”

“Now, though, a growing number of experts and university administrators wonder whether the switch has been a mistake,” added Leonhardt. “Research has increasingly shown that standardized test scores contain real information, helping to predict college grades, chances of graduation and post-college success. Test scores are more reliable than high school grades, partly because of grade inflation in recent years.”

Leonhardt’s article is primarily based on two recent studies published by Opportunity Insights, a not-for-profit organization based at Harvard that conducts data-driven scientific research on how to improve upward mobility. Each of the studies analyzed the value of SAT and ACT standardized test scores in predicting academic success at the 12 so-called Ivy-Plus colleges, — the eight Ivy League colleges plus Chicago, Duke, MIT, and Stanford.

While using different data and analytical methodologies, the overall conclusion of each of these studies was similar: standardized SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic success at the Ivy-Plus colleges regardless of the students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, the second study also found that standardized SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of post-college career success, such as attendance at top graduate schools, high earnings, and employment at prestigious firms. Let me discuss each of these studies.

The Digital Trust Framework: How to Implement New Technologies and Services Worthy of Trust

“Digital trust is a necessity in a world where digital technologies support and mediate virtually all economic transactions, social connections and institutions,” said Earning Digital Trust: Decision-Making for Trustworthy Technologies, a report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in November of 2022. The report defined digital trust as “the expectation by individuals that digital technologies and services –- and the organizations providing them –- will protect all stakeholders’ interests and uphold societal expectations and values.”

But, the report noted that “trust is significantly eroding on a global scale. In order to reverse this trend, leaders and organizations creating and implementing new technologies and digital services must make decisions that are worthy of trust.” To address this challenge, the WEF launched the Digital Trust Initiative in 2021. The Initiative convened an interdisciplinary group of over 60 experts and leaders in privacy, cybersecurity, law, technology ethics, and other fields. The group was asked to establish a consensus among key stakeholders on the meaning of digital trust, as well as to come up with measurable steps to make better, more trustworthy decisions regarding new technologies and digital services.   

The Origins and Content of New Work

“Broadly speaking, many — perhaps most — workplace technologies are designed to save labor,” wrote MIT economist David Autor in his 2015 paper, “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation.” “Given that these technologies demonstrably succeed in their labor saving objective and, moreover, that we invent many more labor-saving technologies all the time, should we not be somewhat surprised that technological change hasn’t already wiped out employment for the vast majority of workers?, asked professor Autor.

The answer, he noted, underlines a fundamental economic reality that’s frequently overlooked: “tasks that cannot be substituted by automation are generally complemented by it.” Automation does indeed substitute for labor. However, automation also complements labor, raising economic outputs in ways that often lead to higher demand for workers. Articles often overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor “and ignore the strong complementarities between automation and labor that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for labor.”

Most jobs involve a number of tasks or processes. Some of these tasks are more amenable to automation, while others require judgement, social skills and other human capabilities. But just because some of the tasks have been automated, does not imply that the whole job has disappeared. To the contrary, automating the more routine parts of a job will often increase the productivity and quality of workers, by complementing their skills with machines and computers, as well as enabling them to focus on those aspect of the job that most need their attention.

The advent of automated teller machines (ATMs) in the 1970s is a case in point. By 2010, there were approximately 400,000 ATMs in the US.  But, not only were bank tellers not eliminated, but their numbers actually rose modestly from 500,000 in 1980 to 550,000 in 2010, driven by two major forces. First, as a result of IT advances that  reduced the costs of operating a bank branch, the number of urban bank branches increased significantly by 2010. Second, while most of the routine cash-handling tasks of bank employees were automated by ATM technologies, IT-based innovations enabled a broader range of bank employees to become involved in relationship banking, providing a variety of relationship-based services to customers, including credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, and investment options.  

Open Source AI: Opportunities and Challenges

“Since the 1980s, open source has grown from a grassroots movement to a vital driver of technological and societal innovation,” said “Standing Together on Shared Challenges,” a report published by Linux Foundation Research in December of 2023. “The idea of making software source code freely available for anyone to view, modify, and distribute comprehensively transformed the global software industry. But it also served as a powerful new model for collaboration and innovation in other domains.”

The report is based on the Open Source Congress that was convened by LF Research in July of 2023 in Geneva to discuss the key challenges facing the open source community, such as safeguarding critical open source infrastructures and ensuring that new regulations are compatible with open source principles and practices. In addition, the Open Source Congress explored the opportunities for open source collaborations on important new topics, in particular, artificial intelligence. Given my interest in “How the Original Promises of the Open Source Movement Now Apply to AI Systems,” I’ll focus my discussions below on the report’s section on AI.

“Does AI Change Everything? What is Open?” is the theme of the report’s AI module. “For the OSS community, AI presents an array of opportunities and challenges. The community leaders assembled in Geneva discussed the need to align on a definition of open AI, as well as on the challenges created by AI-enabled code generators for licensing, security, and intellectual property. Finally, Congress participants reflected on the broader societal impacts of AI and the role of the open source community in addressing issues such as bias, privacy, and existential threats to humanity.”

Technologies that Will Drive Business Transformation Over the Next Two Years

In early December, Deloitte released “Tech Trends 2024,” its 15th annual report that “chronicles the growing business imperative to balance today’s tactical needs with tomorrow’s strategic ambitions.” The report is focused on six major technology trends that are likely to be critical to business transformation over the next 18-24 months. Let me discuss each of these trends, starting with:

Genie out of the bottle: Generative AI as growth catalyst.

Not surprisingly, generative AI and its potential impact on business and the world is Deloitte’s overriding trend. “Philosophers have long debated whether machines are capable of thought, but generative AI makes the question moot,” said the report. “Regardless of whether it possesses intelligence in the philosophical sense, it does in a practical sense, creating the opportunity for huge productivity and efficiency gains in enterprise settings. Now that machines can behave, comprehend, and narrate like humans, the question becomes how this will impact business and the world broadly.”