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February Academic Event (in person)

February 11 at 19:00 - 20:00 GMT

“Harnessing Machine Intelligence for People-Centric Climate Action that goes Beyond Mitigation”Dr. Ramit Debnath, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Social Design, University of Cambridge

 Abstract– The ongoing global race for bigger and better AI systems is expected to have a profound societal and environmental impact by altering job markets, disrupting business models, and enabling new governance and societal welfare structures that can affect global consensus for climate action pathways. However, the biassed datasets used to train the current AI systems could destabilise political agencies responsible for climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions, compromise social stability, and potentially lead to societal tipping events. Simultaneously, critical stakeholders, such as the fossil industry, are striving to develop technical solutions to climate change through climate engineering. These solutions, such as carbon dioxide removal or solar radiation management, are fraught with high uncertainties and pose significant risks to society and the environment, potentially leading to social tipping activities. In this talk, I’ll talk about what we learnt from a set of big data experiments that used LLMs and time-series analysis to investigate how people feel about new climate engineering techniques and how to design interventions that take a whole-system view.

Dr. Ramit Debnath is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Social Design at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the Cambridge Collective Intelligence & Design group and co-director of the climaTRACES lab. He is a fellow of Churchill College and Cambridge Zero and has visiting faculty roles at Caltech and the Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata. His interdisciplinary research integrates engineering and computational social sciences with systems thinking, socio-technical design, and behavioural interventions to address barriers to climate action. Dr. Debnath has a background in electrical engineering and computational social sciences and earned his MPhil and PhD at Cambridge as a Gates Scholar.

 

“The Social Codes of Tech Workers”Dr. Robert Dorschel, Assistant Professor at Digital Sociology, University of Cambridge

“Tech workers” have slipped quietly into society. Even though they constitute a growing occupational segment with relatively high volumes of economic and cultural capital, social scientists have instead focused on the highly precarious workers of the digital economy, such as gig and crowd workers. The talk will shed light on the identities of those responsible for coding, designing and managing the digital technologies that permeate social life. Based on 52 original interviews with tech workers, the question is addressed whether understandings of middle-class white-collar workers as entrepreneurial selves that long for autonomy, flexibility, and creativity hold true for this grouping, or whether new social codes are emerging.

Robert Dorschel is Assistant Professor in Digital Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Interested in the effects and the social making of digital transformations, he conducts research related to digital labour, social class, and the cultural dimension of economic life. Robert studied sociology and political science at Humboldt-University Berlin, Duke University, and the University of Kiel. He completed his PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. From December 2022 until August 2024, Robert served as Assistant Professor in Social Inequality and Diversity at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

Organised and hosted by Mousumi Shyam.

Date: 11th February 2025

Time: evening 19.00  – 20.00 

Location: Deighton room

Food: Pizza & Drinks

Details

Date:
February 11
Time:
19:00 - 20:00 GMT

Venue

Deighton Room
Trinity College
Cambridge,
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In addition to the Calendar of Events listed above, the Society hosts the following weekly events:
Weekly tennis
Every Sunday from 2-4 pm, weather permitting, on the Trinity Old Field Tennis courts. Email ad2278@ to join.
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The Chaplains of Trinity College also organise the following weekly events:
Choral Evensong
Every Sunday night from 6.15 pm, 45-minute long service; then again at 6.15 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Drinks after the service on Sunday evening.
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