In this talk, economist Glen Weyl reimagines artificial superintelligence not as a future threat but as something humanity can co-create. Drawing on economic theory, his talk will explore how communities, institutions, and algorithms can evolve together toward a collectively self-aware global intelligence, transcending the divide between human and machine.

Hosted by the DSI Data, Media, and Society Center

Speaker

Glen Weyl, Author; Economist at Microsoft Research; and Founder of RadicalxChange (RxC), the Plural Technology Collaboratory, and the Plurality Institute

Event Details

Monday, December 1, 2025 (11:30 AM – 12:45 PM ET)

Location: Davis Auditorium (CEPSR) – 4th Floor (Campus Level) – 530 W 120th St, New York, NY 10027

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: The Columbia Morningside campus is open to the Columbia community. If you do not have an active CUID, the deadline to register is at 12:00 PM the day before the event.

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Talk Information

How to be the Superintelligence You’ve Been Waiting For

Abstract: We alternately dread, worship and dismiss the arrival of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). Yet the real superintelligences already surround us: religions, corporations, markets and democracies. This talk will welcome us to imagine not how we can build ASI that defeats us in all things, but instead how we can, together with our environment and machines, become a collectively self-aware global superintelligence. 

Using economic theory as a translational formalism, Weyl will illustrate how we can build core sociological ideas like community into algorithmic design and transform focal technical structures like neural networks into the design of social institutions. By transcending the misleading divide between social and technical systems, such joint engineering suggests a path away from both fear of ASI domination and its disappointing real-world performance.

Bio: Social media polarizes and isolates us. Cryptocurrencies corrupt our politics. AI has become an idol that increasingly suppresses expression, especially of our most diverse and fundamental beliefs. Is an equally bold future possible that strengthens rather than tears down our most sacred values?

Founder of RadicalxChange and originator of influential democratic innovations like Quadratic Voting and Soulbound Tokens, E. Glen Weyl has consistently championed a vision of technology aligned with democracy, pluralism, and fundamental values. His close collaborations with prominent democratic technologists such as Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s pioneering digital minister, and Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s founder, have inspired global movements towards decentralized, inclusive governance.

At Microsoft Research, Weyl recently spearheaded initiatives on empowering religious communities and reinventing prosocial media in collaboration with emerging platforms across the political spectrum. He has been recognized by WIRED, Bloomberg Businessweek, TIME, and CoinDesk as one of technology’s most influential voices, while at the same time becoming the first technologist to win a major award for international religious freedom (the International Religious Freedom Secretariat Peacebuilder Award). His work combines rigor and intellectual excellence (having been Valedictorian of Princeton, earning his PhD from the same in one year and having taught economics at the University of Chicago) with courage and cultural passion (as Executive Producer of an award-winning short documentary and coauthor of two acclaimed and pathbreaking books).