Sydney Business Insights: Must-listen podcasts

Cathy O’Neil on The Future, This Week

Mathematician and algorithmic activist, Dr Cathy O’Neil, joins Sandra and Kai on The Future, This Week to shine a light inside the black box thinking that hides the biases, flawed design and sometimes ill intent that can twist a program into a weapon of math destruction. Listen to the podcast.

The trust shift

Rachel Botsman is a best-selling author, her TED Talk views are in the millions, she lectures at Oxford University on the sharing economy, and her new book Who can you trust? aims to change our perception of trust and understanding of how traditional ideas of banking, media, politics and consumerism are being radically transformed.

Rachel joins Sydney Business Insights to discuss whether we are on the cusp of one of the biggest social transformations in human history. Listen to the podcast.

A future of automation

What does automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence mean for the future of mining, agriculture, cities, the future of jobs, and the risks of a polarised society?

Leading robotics scientist and the Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK’s Ministry of Defence, Hugh Durrant-Whyte, joins Sandra Peter to explore the next 10–15 years. Listen to the podcast.

Uber, money and monkeys with Keith Chen

Keith Chen has studied how monkeys and people (including Uber drivers) react to financial incentives. He has interrogated grammar rules and savings rates and identified that what language you speak inherently makes you a better saver – or not. If these seem like widely disparate intellectual domains, it’s because Keith is a behavioural economist, which makes him a little like the David Attenborough of the business world.

Keith’s work offers insights into what makes some language groups natural savers; how much money it takes to nudge Uber drivers out to work on a cold dark night; and how far away from our jobs we are prepared to live. Listen to the podcast.