Socrates Colombia Seminars

Held in Partnership with the McNulty Foundation, join the Aspen Institute Socrates Program for our first seminars in Cartagena, Colombia. The program will begin Friday afternoon and conclude Sunday afternoon following a closing lunch. You can view the seminar agenda here.

Can the Market Fix the Market?
Like Gilded Age America 100 years ago, the market has produced previously unthinkable levels of wealth as well as unthinkable levels of inequality, and like that era, there is a split between Progressives looking to government and capitalists like Andrew Carnegie (whose writings directly inspired the Giving Pledge of Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg and others) who believed capital could solve its own sins. This time around, however, the capitalists have an assortment of market-based solutions for poverty, including B Corps, impact investing, social impact bonds, development impact bonds, green bonds, and more. Are these market-based approaches achieving the intended impact? Is it enough? What market barriers are we currently addressing and what are we still missing, including structural barriers such as monopolies and cartels, and social barriers like bias and prejudice?

Moderator: Sonal Shah, Professor and Executive Director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University.

Order Amid Chaos: Major Trends Shaping the Future of Technology, Business and Society
This seminar will examine the currents shaping the near to mid future. Artificial intelligence is radically changing every aspect of life on earth, from raising families to running businesses to governing huge societies. How is it affecting productivity and the nature of leadership? How is it altering the workplace and the roles humans play in it? We will also examine how the digital public sphere shaping elections, news and government. We’ll look at the rise of machine learning, with all its promise and perils. Finally, we’ll examine the humanistic questions that lately are coming to the fore. Are we on the path to a better world or have we gone down a dark alley? Are we losing touch with the qualitative, spiritual aspects of existence that make life worth living? Some believe we can endow AI with human values and ideals that will ensure this revolution goes to a good place. Is this a realistic endeavor or a quixotic dream?

Moderator: William Powers, Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab and best-selling author of Hamlet’s Blackberry.