Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Ned Smith, Northwestern University "How 'Market Value' Can Increase Discrimination Even When Most Firms Are Fair"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Title:
Can One Bad Apple Spoil the Bushel? How "Market Value" Can Increase Discrimination Even When Most Firms Are Fair.
Speaker:
Ned Smith, Associate Professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Talk Abstract:
In 1957 economist Gary Becker first published "The Economics of Discrimination." In it Becker argued that efficient and competitive markets should eliminate discrimination in hiring and wage setting over the long run. Becker's argument was as profound as the logic underlying it was straightforward; because discriminating firms are willing to pay a premium to hire only those workers who fit a desired profile, competition should drive discriminating firms out of business and any wage gaps resulting from discrimination should be eliminated away over time. For Becker, this process lends to a remarkable outcome: the presence of even a single non-discriminating employer in a market otherwise composed of discriminators will reduce average discrimination to zero in equilibrium.
We begin with a contrary proposition: the presence of even a single discriminating employer in a market otherwise composed of non-discriminators can, under certain circumstances, increase average discrimination in the market to the level of the single discriminator (or greater) over the long run. Our model turns on what we view to be an increasingly common practice in professional hiring and wage setting; that is, looking to "the market" for guidance in evaluating a given job candidate. To be more specific, we endogenize the price setting process by allowing for interdependence between a given job candidate's "market value" and her valuation as determined by individual hiring firms.
Our adjustment to Becker's model is both theoretically significant and empirically justified. As "financial thinking" (Davis 2009) increasingly dominates contemporary economic and social spheres of life, and "market logics" continue to permeate labor markets in particular (Nelson and Bridges 1999), it is well time to consider the effects and potential consequence of over-weighting market-based methods of valuation at the detriment of other methods of valuation. We build explicitly on Becker's model, itself a promising testament to the power of markets for eliminating prejudice and discrimination under certain conditions, to demonstrate how an overreliance on markets can spread prejudicial and discriminatory behaviors under other conditions. For all the promise of Becker's original model we demonstrate an equally remarkable, but also very plausible, consequence. Discriminatory hiring practices and wage setting can spread through a market like an invisible virus, infecting even those who believe themselves immune.
Speaker Bio:
Ned Smith is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a core faculty member of the Northwestern Institute for Complexity (NICO). Professor Smith has two main areas of research. First, he studies the effects of social structure on the behavior and decision-making of individuals and organizations. His research in this area was awarded a Kauffman Foundation Fellowship in 2009. More recently, Ned's articles on investor decision-making in the hedge fund industry ("Identities as Lenses," Administrative Science Quarterly), and market responses to new executive appointments ("Better in the Shadows", with Kevin Gaughan) were awarded the (2012) Best Published Paper Award by the Academy of Management and the (2016) Best Paper Award by the Academy of Management, respectively. Second, Ned works to connect research on cognitive processes and network theories of social capital to better understand how people utilize (and squander) the resources available to them in their social networks. This research analyzes how people mentally construct their social worlds, i.e., their social networks, according to various psychological and situational factors.
Live Stream:
Time
Wednesday, November 1, 2017 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Hamsa Bastani, University of Pennsylvania "Challenges in Achieving Human-AI Collaboration"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Hamsa Bastani, Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions, and Statistics and Data Science, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Title:
Designing Human-AI Collaboration to Build Human Expertise
Abstract:
Effective human-AI collaboration not only requires human expertise, but also produces it: how we interact with AI today shapes our capabilities tomorrow. This talk draws on three large-scale field studies to examine how AI can improve immediate performance while supporting long-term skill development.
First, in an experiment with nearly 1,000 high school students in Turkey, we find that unfettered GPT-4 access improves assisted performance but harms short-term learning in mathematics. Second, a 12-week study with chess academies shows that self-regulated AI use (where students can request additional help at any time) substantially reduces learning gains relative to system-regulated assistance. Our analysis suggests that harm is concentrated within students’ “zones of proximal development,” where assistance displaces productive struggle; most requests occur outside this zone, with no evidence of harm. This suggests that targeting assistance to situations where it does not displace productive struggle can preserve AI’s performance benefits while protecting learning. Finally, generative AI is both the poison and the cure: the conversational data generated through human-AI interactions offer a window into users’ knowledge states and problem-solving processes, which contains rich information for targeting assistance. In collaboration with the Taipei City Government’s Department of Education, we use student-chatbot interactions and reinforcement learning to personalize the sequence of practice problems across ten high schools, significantly improving learning over a five-month Python certification course.
Taken together, these studies suggest that AI can be designed to preserve and create opportunities for productive struggle, strengthening the human expertise on which effective collaboration depends. Joint work with Osbert Bastani, Angel Chung, Stefanos Poulidis, Alp Sungu, and others.
Speaker Bio:
Hamsa Bastani is an Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on developing novel machine learning algorithms for social impact, including in healthcare and education. She has worked with national governments to deploy algorithms at the country scale for targeted border COVID-19 screening and essential medicine access, and co-led one of the first large field studies of generative AI tutors in high schools. Her research has been published in leading outlets including Nature, Management Science, Operations Research, and PNAS, and has garnered numerous recognitions, including the Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research, the INFORMS Pierskalla Award for best healthcare paper, and the George Nicholson Prize.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/91360427929
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, networks, and artificial intelligence. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Mayank Agrawal, Proof of Human "The Invisible Turing Test for the Internet"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Mayank Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, Proof of Human
Title:
Proof of Human: the Invisible Turing Test for the Internet
Abstract:
This presentation introduces the Process Turing Test, a new framework for distinguishing humans from AI that goes beyond linguistic output to analyze behavioral dynamics. As LLMs routinely pass text-based Turing Tests, we need methods that probe the underlying architecture of intelligence through perception, control, and decision-making patterns. Using process tracing data from canonical cognitive tasks, we demonstrate how behavioral embeddings capture computational signatures unique to human cognition. This provides robust proof-of-personhood that resists adversarial attacks while revealing fundamental principles about how humans and machines process information differently.
Speaker Bio:
Mayank Agrawal is the co-founder and CEO of Proof of Human, a research and deployment company building the proof-of-human layer in digital identity. The company develops high-impact research and translates that work into systems for bot detection, fraud prevention, and continuous authentication. Mayank’s work focuses on new approaches to distinguishing humans from AI through behavioral and cognitive signals. He earned his PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton University, where he studied computational models of human decision-making with Jonathan Cohen, Tom Griffiths, and Nathaniel Daw. His research spans cognitive science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, with work published in Science, PNAS, and Psychological Review. He previously studied Computer Science and Philosophy at Swarthmore College.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/96392420891
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, networks, and artificial intelligence. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, November 11, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)