Chicago Booth Review: In this episode of the Capitalisn’t podcast, hosts Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales sit down with Chicago Booth’s Sendhil Mullainathan to discuss if AI is really “intelligent” and whether a profit motive is always bad. In the process, they shed light on what it means to regulate in the collective interest and if we can escape the demands of capitalism when capital is the very thing that’s required for progress.

Says Mullainathan, “My view is these technologies are going to make us all better off, for sure. The question is, how do we make sure that happens? Because there is risk associated with them. And for me, governance, regulation, it’s all just the way to get us to what I think is a really good state that we couldn’t imagine before.

“That’s not to minimize the risk, but I think I’m fundamentally optimistic that there’s a much better world out there because of these technologies. For me, that’s what makes me excited about governance and regulation. I feel like it’s stuff in the service of getting us to good places we couldn’t otherwise get to.”

Sendhil Mullainathan served as C3.ai DTI Principal Investigator on the project “Machine Learning Support for Emergency Triage of Pulmonary Collapse in COVID-19.”

Listen to the podcast here.