Fair Enough? From UCL's Grand Challenge of Inequalities

Lauren Andres: Hello and welcome to Fair Enough, the new podcast from UCL Grand Challenge of Inequalities. It explores existing and emerging innovative solutions for delivering everyday justice. I'm Lauren Andros.
Victoria Austin: And I'm Victoria Austin. In this series we'll bring together visionary leaders from across disciplines and sectors to ask one simple question. When it comes to tackling inequalities, are we doing enough?
Lauren Andres: So whether you work in industry, government policy or research, or you simply care about what a fairer future could look like, this podcast is for you. So let's get started. In today's episode we're going to explore economic and political inequality and unfairness between different groups. We'll ask how technology might shape these issues in the future. And we are joined by two brilliant guests.
Victoria Austin: We'd like to say a huge welcome to Professor Peter John and um, Professor Imran Rasul Imran Rasul is Professor of Economics at ah, University College London. He's the Director of the Centre for Microeconomic Analysis and Public Policy at the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the co director of the Stone Centre on Wealth Creation, Inequality and the Economy. His research interests include labour development and public economics. And um, he served as the President for the Royal economic society in 2025 and is the Acting President for the European economic association. In 2019 he was jointly awarded the Yojo Jannason Award in Economics. Peter John is Professor of Public Policy at King's College London. He's interested in how to involve citizens in public policy, often deploying behavioural interventions as experimen. He is the author of Nudge Nudge Think Think, experimenting with ways to change civic behaviour. How far to assessing behavioural public policy and um, field experiments in political science and public policy. His current book project is the Political Economy of Public Policy. Fascinating. We're so glad to welcome you both here today. Thank you for joining us.
Lauren Andres: So happy to have you. And I'm going to kick off with our first question which I think I'm going to turn to Imran first and really ask Imran, what do you know about the trajectories of horizontal injustice? And I think here for our listeners it would be nice just to know how you define horizontal injustice. And really building on this as well and thinking about inequalities and horizontal injustice, how might these trajectories affect us in the future?
Imran Russell: All right, thanks. Thanks Lauren and Victoria for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here today. Um, so in thinking about horizontal, horizontal inequalities, um, whether they're just or not in part depends on their root causes. So I think uh, we'll come to some of the potential causes of horizontal inequalities in a while. But let me just lay out what we know about some of these different um, inequalities. And when we think about horizontal inequalities a lot of the lens of economics is thinking about differences between different groups. And there's many different groups we could consider. And so I'm going to focus in on those groups that uh, you're a member of, not through any particular choice. It's based on the characteristics that you were born with. So we might think of those as being related to gender inequalities across different races and ethnicities, um, based on family background or geography where you're born in the UK and in an ideal, perhaps just world, those types of characteristics that nobody themselves chooses would play no role in your long term trajectories of well being or economic outcomes. But we know that the truth is very far from that and those types of characteristics have persistent impacts on how well um, individuals do. So to give a few examples, if we think about gender inequalities, um, there's been huge progress in terms of uh, educational attainment, uh, of women relative to men to the extent that many different markers of educational attainment, women have overtaken men to the extent that there may be a concern with some left behind, uh, men in terms of some of those outcomes. And as a result we've seen closing gaps in terms of labour market outcomes uh, between men and women. However, it's been recently documented in the UK that just about all of that uh, convergence in labour market outcomes is really attributable just to changes in educational
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Imran Russell: attainment. It's not driven to by other factors actually in the labour market itself. And so in a sense we might think of those inequalities as closing but not actually getting anywhere close to diminishing altogether, at least in the foreseeable future. And there may be good explanations for that related to issues such as um, child penalties that women's labour market outcomes tend uh, to be much worse than men's after the birth of the first child. So something's going on in the labour market over and above educational attainment. That means that those types of inequalities are not reducing and the trajectories of inequality seem to be fairly persistent. Similarly for race and ethnicity we have a very similar pattern where many ethnic groups have converged in terms of uh, educational outcomes, but there we don't see those translating into necessarily improved performance in the labour market. We see fairly large and persistent gaps in labour market outcomes, especially for minority, uh, women, but also um, for men as well. So what might be some of the causes of that? It may be be down to the fact that minorities are much less likely to go onto the most um, elite universities despite having uh, similar levels of educational attainment. When they do go on to universities, they choose a much narrower set of courses. And in terms of uh, occupations that individuals end up in, for some minorities, those tend to be much more concentrated than the majority. And so that can lead to other issues of vulnerability that uh, maybe will come to. And similarly we could talk about closing gaps or a lack of convergence based on family background or geography, which is also hugely important in the UK as well.
Lauren Andres: Thank you. I think you manage in a couple of minutes just to give us already a snapshot of um, really the key issues behind inequalities and the conversion between economic, cultural, political inequalities and what it means. And what are the challenges for the term you used just world Peter. I'm just wondering how this resonates with your own work and how you are, and you've been looking at those issues of inequalities more from a public policy perspective and how you're engaging with this really key challenge of increasing inequalities and especially I mean gender gaps, racial gaps and all the very much intersectional burdens behind inequalities.
Peter John: Yes, and I very much agree with Imran's overview analysis of looking at inequality in multidimensional terms and also being very alert to its dynamic quality that it, it changes over time. I think we need to be very alert to that. Um, I'm also interested in the kind of classic questions of the kind of persistence of inequality, particularly in economic terms, the tendency to transmit uh, down generations and actual fact, if I'm corrected, economic inequality may increase over time and in Britain we've had that increase in economic inequality which then spills over into other kinds of inequality. As, uh, a political scientist, uh, well, I'm actually very much interested in the relationship between politics and economics, the kind of the classic topics of political economy. And in the political sphere there are huge inequalities as well, particularly in terms of political participation and access to the political system, which can be redressed to inequality, that people actually are able to take power for themselves, uh, and make the case for more resources or better access. And if that itself is unequal, that makes that much harder. And in my own research I'm very much interested in voter turnout and why it's unequal and in particular what can we do about it? So I'm interested in studying get out the vote campaigns where we campaign with doorknock. And in my recent research you can actually find that one of the problems with these door campaigns is they don't actually reach the groups which are kind of m. Most would want to, the real low turnout groups. They tend to reach the people who are already slightly privileged and then benefit them. And in some early analysis it suggests that actually you can do these campaigns and actually reinforce inequality. So there's lots of contradictions in this. Fortunately, in our recent research we've actually looked at the data much more carefully and we found that actual fact, these campaigns do increase equality, but they still target that kind of middle group. And the real challenge is how can we scale up these sort of interventions to address equality, uh, in the round? So it kind of goes that, you know, the equality is a very persistent recurrent and it's actually quite hard in the public policy sphere to shift it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but we need to be alert to the challenges of doing that.
Lauren Andres: I mean, I really like your point on, um, persistence, uh, because I think that's often a point we tend not
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Lauren Andres: to look at. And I think this idea of persistence is really interesting where we're looking at the issue and the problem at different scales and especially if we start to combine the policy aspect with what's happening in a way at local and community level. And I mean, without going into much, much on it, I mean, I've done a lot of work in the past, sort of 10 and 15 years using the concept of persistent resilience. Because I think when we're looking at marginal and communities, what we realise is the way they cope on an everyday basis is through persistent mechanism, which essentially give this one form of resilience which is just in a way the basic coping mechanism and tactics in order to very much survive. And I think this is where we do have a real problem when we're thinking the amount and the numbers of communities, individuals, households, families, having to rely on mechanism of persistent resilience to really survive all the pressures they're getting in their life. And we know that this is increasing, as you both mentioned, even further in the context of increased living costs, issues of employment and also what you touch upon. Imran. I mean, this issue of less left, uh, behind places and the disconnection and the importance of where you live and
Imran Russell: how this matters, I think that's why it's very important to think of the whole life cycle and the trajectories of inequality because in a sense we've seen a slowdown in social mobility in the uk so you know, the importance of family background has never been stronger in the uk and that's I think in part driven by, you know, a whole range of different factors. But where inequality has increased the most is not so much in terms of income inequality, it's in terms of inequality of wealth. And you know, family wealth is something that, you know, gets transmitted across generations and bakes in, you know, unequal starting points for individuals in life. And so that's um, uh, understanding sort of the relationship between different types of inequalities, whether they're in political. Political participation, income, wealth and health I think is vitally important. But it's really that wealth inequality that seems to be very important for um, slowing down some elements of convergence that we've been discussing.
Victoria Austin: I think it's really fascinating to look at the Venn diagram between what both of you are sharing here because, I mean, and Paul Johnson's recent publication, the summary of the work that's been done, um, as you'll know. Well, Imran with IFS and the Nuffield, um, investigation into inequalities obviously also reasserts this idea that while education disparities might be closing, disparities in the labour market are not running at the same closing rate. So we're seeing almost like a better return to education than we are. So there's still something structurally problematic going on in our economy that is causing inequality between groups of people to be persistent, as we've said, and um, and problematic. And as you said at the beginning, one might also add unjust but a lot of the political debate and lacks nuance but, but as well as lacking nuance I think we oftentimes are focused on these debates about overall inequity which are relevant and pertinent. And the debate about wealth inequity is really important because we are obviously in the situation that we're in where growth has been stalled for a long time and situations of people's life experience and being able to afford the things in their daily lives is getting harder. But even that debate, it doesn't really unpick the nuance within those communities, within that horizontal um, inequity which I wonder if that's part of the reason we're led to these kind of political um, situations where it's harder to motivate some groups of people to participate in elections and to participate in the process because potentially the politics is not really discussing the real economics of their lives. I mean, Peter, does that have resonance?
Peter John: Absolutely. And I think survey organisations have been polling citizens for many, many years and showing increasing disenchantment with the political process, declining level of trust in polit and a feeling that politicians are arguing amongst themselves and not addressing the key issues of people. So it's not surprising that people then wish to turn to alternatives. Um, and of course they're quite right to take to alternatives. But it seems to be that the main political parties, uh, particular parties of the left, should be able to mobilise and discuss these sort of issues much more strongly than they do. So they sometimes hand over this agenda to parties of the right. And it's very ironic that parties of the right who are
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Peter John: often led by people very rich and privileged, are able to mobilise this sense of exclusion, geographical inequality and how that reinforces with senses of social inequality as it's defined by place in a kind of rhetoric which actually then challenges the left parties, um, on their agenda. So I think there are a lot of consequences, I think, for the failure of what we may call conventional politicians to really speak out on these terms and it gives it over to others. Uh, I mean, there should be a wide debate and it's great that we have this interesting political environment at the moment with ranges of political parties and also other parties on the left as well, the Greens, Um, but I think it's also an area where I think the parties which formerly had that legitimacy, I think ought to also step up to the mark as well, engage in that and that wider debate. It's interesting looking at the Labour leadership contest at the moment and these issues of. I, um, mean, we're streeting, uh, this morning saying he was wanting to have a look at wealth taxes again. So it shows that parties do think about these issues and so I always think there's hope in politics. Uh, as a political scientist, um, I really do believe that the political process is an arena which can capture these things, even if politicians just do drop the ball from time to time.
Victoria Austin: Let's come to Imran in a second on the wealth tax point. But, um, before we move on, you're fascinated by behavioural science and I wonder what does behavioural science offer to us in this space? How do we nudge in the right direction?
Peter John: Yeah, I mean, I think nudges are. I mean, I'm a great fan of nudges, uh, as you know from reading out my bio. And I think nudges, um, have A real role in addressing areas where people want to take some action. And obviously we've got huge health inequalities as one area where you have variety of lifestyles.
Lauren Andres: Right.
Victoria Austin: We're now talking about decades of deficit rather than years.
Peter John: Exactly. Um, so I think nudges can play a role. I don't think they're the only solution. I think the nudges can work on their own, but I think particularly successive nudges, um, and if they can scale up to sort of make a difference. The attraction of nudges is that they don't appear to be the intrusive state sort of telling people what to do. They're trying to kind of appeal to people's where they might want to go ideally. So I think they form a potential way to have a more collaborative sort of relationship between citizens and state on these tricky issues.
Victoria Austin: Can you give us a quick example if someone doesn't know what a nudge is?
Peter John: Well, nudge is sometimes like a reminder or a default. So you've joined a new employer and you're kind of worrying about sort of getting a new lecture just started or whatever it is, and you don't think about your pension contribution. Well, a nudge is basically one would actually then default you into a pension scheme and nudges actually now become law and policy, um, uh, right around the world. So they kind of appeal to where people want to go and you arrange things, what's called the choice architecture. So, um, you can encourage people to sort of make a choice which is both good for themselves but also has wider benefits, uh, for societies.
Imran Russell: Just to come back on the point on political narratives, in a world of rising inequality, I think in the UK that's somewhat hard to do because, um, of the extent of geographic inequalities. When we talk about aggregate statistics for the economy, often there's quite a mismatch between those headline figures and what people around the country may well be experiencing. So in a sense that, that comes down to. I mean, Peter will be able to speak on this much more. But in a sense, you know, our political system is. There's a mismatch between political power, which is relatively centralised and the degree of sort of fragmentation in the economy around the country and the huge outlier that London is compared to other regions. And if you benchmark it to sort of different, different parts of the, uh, the eu, London is just almost like a separate, uh, uh, environment altogether on many different dimensions. So in a sense it becomes harder to convey what are the key challenges and trade Offs because they might not be the same in different parts of the country. And as long as there's a mismatch between where political decisions are made and economic trade offs that are made at a much more desegregated level, we may well face that tension. And that tension is really coming to the fore with slowing down of social mobility and the rise in the number of political parties which our system perhaps was never um, designed for. I think all of that just feeds into that. I have a sense it's becoming harder
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Imran Russell: for us as a society to build a consensus on which inequalities really matter. What do we find acceptable quality solutions to those? In many public opinion polls, geographic inequalities tend to come out at the top of people's concerns. But even that building a consensus on what dimensions of those inequalities are important, what might be the solution, seems to be becoming harder. So um, I think that's a key sort of um, challenge to keep in mind as well that um, political inequalities are really kind of central to some of this.
Victoria Austin: And before we move on just on this point on wealth inequality, obviously you've made the point a few times about how concentrated wealth and passive income is among those living in London and the southeast, actually also among men and those with um, with higher university degrees and higher levels of education. Would a wealth tax make any difference to horizontal inequalities? Is it a solution?
Imran Russell: It depends on exactly how it's implemented. I mean the first thing is it's very hard to measure individual wealth. Um, and so in that sense, uh, that's a hard thing for the state to do. And I think most individuals actually have an under appreciation of what the state can do. What information does the state have to actually design a designer wealth tax? Um, even if you're able to measure individual wealth, then individuals have incentives to reallocate their wealth or to make different economic choices which might lead to worse economic outcomes for society as well. There's all those kinds of behavioural responses as well. We have many other margins of taxes that potentially um, um, could be as effective as wealth taxes. But I think ultimately we need to step back and say what is the objective here? If a wealth tax is there to raise money, uh, for government, uh, revenues, then you know, you essentially need a wealth tax to be very well designed. If a wealth tax is there, uh, instead to signal that we want some individuals to pay more than others, but not necessarily tie that directly into the actual levels of wealth that they have, that in some sense is a Simpler system, but it will. We won't achieve the same in terms of raising revenue, but perhaps that's not the objective of a wealth tax. It's more in terms of moving towards a system that seemed to be fairer even if it doesn't. Those are all questions I think we have to ask what's the objective? And once we agree on that, then it's easy to talk about how a wealth tax should be designed or indeed whether the existing framework of taxation should be modified to reflect um, that need to reduce inequality too.
Victoria Austin: Mhm.
Lauren Andres: Peter, I'm just coming to you uh, on this and also I'm just wondering if you could expand in what is your view on this idea of political and spatial fragmentation but also what Imran just said. I mean the issue of building a consensus. Because I'm sure this resonates a lot with your own work and also with the idea of nudging.
Peter John: Absolutely. And I think we're living in a fascinating time in terms of politics where you've got this huge pushback against London Southeast and sensitive national political parties themselves are now retreating into the kind of English kind of core and new parties are ascendant. And I mean, I think it has been a kind of real attempt to try to decentralise power. Obviously parliaments in Scotland and Wales, uh, elected mayors, but I think people have not really seen enough changes on the ground to really sort of bid. I mean they do or attach the institutions, but I think they want uh, a lot more. And I think the question is to what extent can at the current point the central political system deliver sort of fundamental sort of changes. And I think this is obviously something which is the current leaders, or rather potential leaders of the Labour Party are thinking about, they want to come in with some quite sort of strong. Their only chance of electoral survival is to come. And this is what the public have thought of. Two years of Labour government, you've had this big chance. What if you don't? All these kind of big issues including uh, inequality. But I think what these potential leaders face is the problem of the limited policy options, particularly on public finances, um, and the need to reassure international bond markets. So something like a wealth tax would have to be done incredibly kind of carefully. As Imran says, it may actually be better to tweak other kind of instruments than to take a real kind of hot potato, uh, which in the end may force governments um, on the back foot. And I think if the nudging agenda teaches anything, I think we need to think how do policies resonate in the minds of individuals, things may look really good on paper, but when they land, they often land incredibly kind of differently. And I
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Peter John: think we need to think about individual psychology about these policies, how that kind of work. And of course with wealth, tax, you know, wealthy, having lots of advisors. So not, not only is the kind of the political debate about that is going to be something which will take up the political bandwidth, but then it may not necessarily have the consequences which policymakers desire. And I was thinking this morning, admit, you know, kind of if only we'd address this at the start of the kind of blurg when public finances were so, you know, much more sort of beneficial, maybe of all the governments that perhaps should have had more ambition, perhaps it was that kind of Blair government because they really had the opportunity with public finances to do something quite radical to address all these sort of issues which were public at the time. And the problem is now, I think the people in office now don't have such access to public resources, public legitimacy to carry out these netter changes. We're in a bit of a sort of low equilibrium trap as it were, unable to kind of break out. Um, so I don't want to be too pessimistic, especially having said that politics should be optimistic but uh, uh, those were thoughts as I was uh, listening to the radio broadcast this uh, morning.
Lauren Andres: What you're really sort of showing and saying is obviously we are now in a very, very complex political side of fears and I think the ability to develop radical solution innovations is becoming uh, uh, more and more and more difficult. And I'm wondering in this context, I mean, is there any way still to be able to shake the system? And I mean do you think typically technological revolutions, new AI tools, could they be an option to try to shake the system, to nudge, to try to address some of those inequalities? I mean what is your view on um, this.
Peter John: The interesting thing about technology and we can go right back to previous technological revolutions, they always kind of cut both ways. Sometimes we knew technology to give powers to power holders, sometimes they kind of hand power to new kind of groups. And so it is with the technologies we have today. And um, myself and Helen Margetts, we wrote in 2015 this book called Political Turbulence where we were sort of trained to link the way in which social media, media can potentially uh, help people achieve collective action by improving communication, including the sort of, you know, the extent to which people know what others are doing, which is a kind of nudge, kind of kind of idea. Um, and you can see around the world many kind of social movements using social media. Of course you can see governments and social movements that want to stop change also using those same instruments. So it's always double edged I think with what we have today with AI. I think we're still at very early stages and the question is how is that going to work? I mean some people say that one of the effects of AI is that bit like social media almost like forces you to communicate with others. That AI actually means that you communicate with your AI chatbot or agent. So in some ways it might actually reduce communication amongst others. Um, this is what's the so called chilling effect of AI. But another is actually that it actually does encourage um, more debate, more deliberation um and some recent sort of papers suggesting that it allows kind of consensus to build more kind of strongly. So I think um, again ever the optimist I kind of think as AI gets more developed and also gets more integrated with other kinds of technology like social media, I think we're going to see it's a kind of fantastic resource I think for citizens wanting to carry out kind of political action. But I think it is fascinating and I think we don't quite know and of course there is also the impact of AI and how it's going to impact on fellow labour markets which I think Imran can talk about this and obviously the extent to which it has an impact on those markets will then have consequences in terms of some of the debates we've already been having about fragmentation and exclusion. So AI is going to meet some fantastic jobs for people who are, but also it's going to mean less jobs for others and the question is what happens to the others as they get excluded as they have been from previous technological revolutions.
Lauren Andres: Yeah, there's a huge risk behind AI, ah, deployment, adoption because we know as well that it may actually just lead to an increase of inequalities even further. Imran, what do you think?
Imran Russell: The evidence is obviously uh, still in its very early stages but I think there's two broad um, lines of evidence that are built. Building one is sort of in terms of how first of all let me just say when we try to measure adoption of AI in firms that's a very difficult thing to do. That can mean anything from like my employees have access to copilot versus I'm hiring software engineers to help them uh, code tasks uh,
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Imran Russell: in Claude. So there's lots of difficulties in actually getting a handle on what firms are doing and what individuals uh, mean by having adopted AI. Or other forms of technology. But putting that to one side generally we find that um, the adoption of AI within firms tend to reduce inequalities within a firm allowing low skilled workers often to catch up with high skilled workers. This is based on some very specific context where um, AI is very complementary to workers. But on the other hand it may well be increasing inequalities between firms, between those who adopt AI successfully and those uh, uh, that don't. And that might in turn lead to an even more greater scarcity of uh, good uh, jobs jobs or the types of employment that people would value as well as we have really no idea what's going to happen to the level of employment that really depends on the nature of the technology. One way to get a handle m on this is actually uh, the COVID shock. Um, so Covid actually really revealed the importance of horizontal inequalities. They were always there. But inequalities across different groups for example in either their pre existing health conditions or inequalities in terms of the quality of housing in different groups or parts of the country were subject to really meant that people's initial conditions when the economy is hit by this big uncertain, unforeseen shock really plays out and tends to exacerbate pre existing inequalities. And so AI may have a similar flavour. So coming back to something I mentioned before, when we look at occupational choices and the concentration of occupations, how they vary across different minorities that gives us a handle on which types of occupations may be most vulnerable to technological change. And there may be certain groups or certain parts of the country that are particularly exposed through that route. So to give one example, if you take sort of Pakistani men, about 15% of them are employed as taxi drivers. So ah, that's a huge concentration. If we take white British men, no more than 2% of them them are working in any given occupation. So there's much more um, concentration of occupational choice amongst M minorities. And so if we think that those types of occupations may be more at risk than others that is going to have knock on effects on inequality uh across those groups. Similarly if we look at uh, uh women, minority women are much more exposed to the healthcare sector and working as nurses or in other forms of social care that may be a profession that's relatively untouched by AI or ones in which the productivity is increased by the use of AI. So there will be all of those different types of uh, impacts. But just understanding inequalities in people's starting points, just as in the COVID pandemic gives us a sense of who may be more or less exposed to some of these changes. Given the impacts will be quite different across different sectors of the economy.
Victoria Austin: Economy really interested in something you said there, uh, about kind of the implications of AI? I think you know we've experienced technological shocks before and this may or may not be equivalent. I don't think as you say, the data is. The data is not available to make that decision or judgement. But while the shock is itself and the technology itself is almost most neutral in its intent, the decisions we make around that structural change as it may well become, are not neutral, they're normative. They're effectively political decisions that we're making around an economic reality. And I think sometimes it's my opinion that we fail to translate that as a political decision. For example, if we require less labour hours because AI is able to take the heavy lift, that could be great. The assumption that we're oftentimes making is that those individuals won't be paid and therefore will fall into poverty or have some negative consequences. But that isn't inevitable. That's not an inevitable consequence of us needing to do less work as human beings. So I just, I mean, Imran first and then Peter, I wonder if you wanted to comment a little bit on the sort of technocratic nature of some of these debates. Whether it's about the technology or about the economics and kind of. I think maybe you don't agree with me but this failure for that to translate into a real political discussion with a variety of solutions attached to it which I also think contributes to why people feel quite put off by politics.
Peter John: But uh.
Victoria Austin: Anyway, Imran, what do you think?
Imran Russell: No, I think that's the broader notion of trying to direct technical change by providing incentives um, for that technology
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Imran Russell: either to be designed or utilised in ways that doesn't cause harm, harm on mass or you know, potentially to compensate those somehow uh, who, who uh, uh, who are harmed. But you know, recent history in terms of you know, trying to think about compensating people in response to trade shocks suggests you know, that that was something that really we made a lot of mistakes on as many economies did. But so I think that's um. That is something that should be up for public debate. You're exactly right, Victoria. We don't have to. To take this path as something that cannot be adjusted just as we do with other forms of technology. We have no issues about uh, providing subsidies or incentives for the moving to net zero and the adoption or the design of various green technologies. AI is no different in that regard. But I think another analogy is also with regulation of social media. It's a very hard thing to do but in a sense there's almost overwhelming evidence that at least for young people exposure to social media tends to have negative consequences on almost anything we can measure. So in a sense we often think of the tax system as being there to discourage consumption of goods that cause individuals harm. The evidence is fairly uh, well established now. So um, yeah, sometimes you think we could be bolder in trying to do that but at the same time the enforceability is maybe somewhat different than on other margins. But uh, I agree, but this is where having uh, an active debate not just amongst politicians but among businesses, amongst communities who are experiencing at ah the sharp end of what is it we want to use this technology for? What do we find acceptable? How do we identify winners and losers? Um, I think is really really important for us going forward.
Peter John: Peter absolutely agree with that and I think um, actually there's a debate as to whether AI is actually neutral because obviously is designed by humans that eventually and some people argue that it does have kind of biases. But let's leave that little debate to one side. You're right and absolutely I think there needs to be more of a debate I think and that's a little bit related to my earlier comments. I think one of the issues we face place in as ah in the UK economy is our kind of dependence on kind of what we might call information providing kind of services like accountancy, all these sort of international kind of firms and finance and all those sort of things which for you know, for an economy which is kind of poorly performing on many dimensions, um, it really can't afford to sort of sort of hold back sort of technological change in those kind of more profit profitable elements or else there just won't be the taxes to recycle. So I think that probably does explain policymakers passivity in the face of AI that probably it's something that does need to be seized hold as this international competition really hots up. Um, and it's a bit different to social media to a certain sense because I said the AI effects almost like the internal wiring of all the organisations um and the different kind of roles uh within them. Um, um. But that doesn't mean the policymakers should be passed massive. As that's rolled out there are all sorts of issues around. Obviously we have strengthened employment rights in the law and also the kind of the consequences uh, of changing employment practises. Um, um and that's Obviously a role for the kind of public sector, the education sector. Ah as well. Of course we are all ourselves affected by AI in terms of universities, how they work, also how we train people, prepare people for the workplace. A lot of universities actually wanted to design AI out of training and sort of get people to do face to face written down exams again. Um, and one of the courses I'm proposing in Kings, uh, is a course going to be called AI and Democracy and it's going to complete full on AI course where you know, all the assessment will be done kind of through AI. People will be using uh, claw code. If I can get Kings to kind of redo that properly. Um, and so, and I think, so I think we need to sort of diffuse the kind of knowledge base so it doesn't just become a privilege of people who kind of really sort of kind of worked it out. And I think there's a real danger of old inequalities coming through the new. Because in some ways I think if you looked at kind of employment practises, large number of professions were kind of often ways out which particular groups, groups will be able to actually get secure place in society. You know, things like accountancy, medicine, all these kind of classic professions. And if they're going to be reshaped, it may be the case that the employees who are able to do well are the ones who are actually more entrepreneurial,
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Peter John: actually working all these things out. And that actually may then benefit people who are kind of privileged through the education system to actually then use AI to get into companies. I was hearing an interview on, um, you probably think I listen to a lot of radio, I do, um, about a plumber graduate, a fellow basically. And the employer was saying, well we don't need to employ kind of coders and things. We actually want people who are kind of savvy with AI and said, and since good luck to this student, this philosophy graduate and he become very I savvy and then got this job in a, in a sort of tech heavy firms. But it may be the case that, that that result is not unequal as well because those kind of skills are ones which are more confident students. The one from going to sort of more privileged education backgrounds, maybe the people who move faster in this kind of more disruptive environment, maybe that's what we need to keep an eye on about the distribution of these kind of skills and who's gaining them, um, and who's getting access to the labour market.
Victoria Austin: It's fascinating. We're running out of time. Maybe I'll go back to Lauren.
Lauren Andres: So UCL is in a very unique position. Victoria and I are leading this grand challenge of inequalities for the next five years. We have academic independence, we have the ability to invest in our, our research priorities. We have substantial internal capacity, we have significant convening power. What we have as well is, and I think that will resonate speeder with your own universities. I mean, there's definitely more and more push to recognise the role of universities. And I think here I would just like to point out that, um, UCL Vice Provost Garen Rees yesterday published a piece, uh, in the Times where he's very m much making the argument that if politicians need to be serious about growth, they need to support universities, uh, because we're not only here as academics, we are very much here as experts, uh, into translating ideas into impact. And that's very much what Geraint, uh, is making, uh, in his piece. And I'm just wondering, Imran and Peter, how does this resonate with what you think we should do within ucl, but also what we should do as, as professors in very renowned higher education institutions? Imran, maybe do you want to go first?
Imran Russell: Yeah, thanks, Dawn. So, um. Um. I totally agree that UCL is in a very strong position to contribute to some of these debates for all the reasons that you said, but also given where we're located very close to the knowledge quarter, and I think it's sort of been underlying sort of a lot of the discussion that we've had in terms of the role of firms in all of this is going to be hugely important. Ultimately, firms will do what's in their interest of their shareholders. But, you know, if UCL has the ability to engage with firms to a greater extent through the knowledge quarter and other channels, then that will be hugely important. We are in the market for producing ideas, right? That's one element of what universities do. And those ideas can contribute to debate as long as we maintain the trust of individuals that, um, you know, the ideas we're putting out there are, um, in a sense, you know, unbiased or very clear, you know, what we, uh, what we're trying to achieve with those ideas. But the other element is, you know, the quid pro quo. Like, what are we doing for social mobility ourselves? What are we doing in terms of equipping the generation that are, uh, coming to UCL in order to be ready to face, uh, some of these challenges? And so I think it's as much as important to be internally nimble for some of those changes. And for us as an organisation, so our role is going to change. Um, you know, the need for skills, the types of skills is changing a lot. So being in an organisation which recognises that, adapts to that I think is going to be very important. And that coupled with having a very trusted voice, I think everything really stems from uh, that reputational aspect of maintaining that.
Peter John: I totally agree with that. And King's College London is in a similar position to UCL in many respects in its central location and you know, it's enjoyed in a high reputation, been very successful, successful. I mean we do live in a period of challenge for all of higher education and actually one of the things we ought to be, need to be sensitive to is the kind of inequalities within the higher education system as certain institutions are being, going to be more affected by these, are already being affected by these challenge changes. And it behoves us in the kind of metropolitan core to be very alert to that, ah, and engage with that and offer to sort of look leadership so that universities can continue to flourish. I mean British universities be incredibly successful but in the current period there's whole sets of storms, a lot of them kind of financial, but also to do with responding to change. I think universities have been good in the past at responding to change and I think I very much anticipate they're going to be.
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Peter John: And these debates are very live in ucl, particularly around the employment market. Ah, and I think it may require kind of looking at things, particularly in an interdisciplinary way, that some of these old disciplines may not work in quite the same sort of way as before. Um, so we've set up an AI institute, um, uh, in King's, there's many interdisciplinary, uh, units that make these debates. Um, and also I think it's also, as I was saying before going back to the experience of the kind of student, um, that they actually really are fully engaged with all these wider debates dates and then have that kind of skills, not just in AI but in other things to enter this kind of very sort of rather more fragile, um, world, uh, which we live in now.
Victoria Austin: Thank you both so much. This has been a fascinating discussion and one which I wish we could continue for longer. Um, we always like to ask our guests to leave with a little reflection, um, and something to offer our listeners. So if there was one book or artwork or film or song that captures really well for you, the idea were fair enough, what would it be and why? Imran.
Imran Russell: So I'd probably come back to a book that was already mentioned in uh, the Challenging Inequalities book, which has just been launched based. It's the second volume of the Deaton Review of Inequalities that we've been running at IFS for the last four years or so. That was written by uh, a group from the Deaton Reviews uh, panel and really lays out based on 100 different pieces of evidence that were produced in the first volume, what does this all mean? What really are the types of inequalities, um, that we should be concerned about? Which ones are changing, how do they interrelate? So it's not just about inequality per se, but the dimensions of inequality really matter in their relationship. And there's lots of discussion there about the role of the education system, the role of firms, the supply of good jobs, the ability to accumulate wealth, um, as well as key lessons, uh, and implications for policymakers not in, in terms of necessarily policies to implement, but what are the key trade offs that we really face here? We can't do everything. And so what are the most fighting choices that to come back to a point that Peter made, we absolutely need to be very explicit about, uh, and sort of engage with everybody in society on those issues. But you know, as we've often said on the decent uh, panel, things are just much harder when growth is, is lower. You know, then you easily fall into this trap of people viewing the world in a zero sum way. And uh, but maybe that's the world that we're now going to be in for the, for a while. Maybe you know, AI will change that completely. But things uh, will be much harder without sort of uh, growth and rising living standards to meet some of these challenges. So that still remains very, very central I think to thinking about um, the resolution of inequalities and as well.
Victoria Austin: Thank you. And I'd plus one that it's um, even understandable by uh, ordinary human beings. So I encourage people to pick it up and have a read. Peter?
Peter John: Yes. Um, uh, I've recently been to see the production of Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House. This opera by Benjamin Britton. Um, it's a fantastic production, fantastic singers, uh, with Alan Clayton in the leading role. It's last night is tonight, so I think listeners of this podcast probably are not going to be able to get yourselves. I can get there, I'm not going to be able to get to it, but hopefully it will be revived and it's a great opera. Um, it's about the fate of this uh, Fisher person, Peter Grimes, his struggles. It's actually the opera. It's actually a lot of it is about inequality, um, within communities. Perhaps we've not talked a huge amount about that particular social inequality within communities. And the piece I want to talk about is something which I've seen the opera many times, but I had not really fully noticed this really beautiful quartet that comes at the end of Act 2 and it's sung by four female voices and it's wonderfully sung, uh, in this production and it's called from the Gutter. And really it's. It's about. They sing about how women's lives are shaped by the failures and violence of men. Uh, and these women see injustice really clearly, but they feel they can't change it. So it's a pessimistic part of the opera. But the music and the emotion is just so powerful. It kind of shines through in a kind of very, very moving piece. And I think it's really important that those four women are ah, taking the agenda in a very sort of male controlled called a, uh, society in which they live. So I, uh, was absolutely,
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Peter John: really moved by this particular piece and regretted not really noticing it fully before. But I have now and very much recommend it as the whole opera itself is a fantastic piece.
Victoria Austin: A lovely, um, example of what we've been talking about all day about fully noticing the details that are happening behind the top lines. So thank you so much for sharing that. We really appreciate your time today, both of you. It's been a fascinating discussion session and um, thank you for joining us.
Lauren Andres: Thank you again. I think it was extremely rich, stimulating. I mean, full of ideas to take forward, full of more conversation I think, to have. And I think there's just so many that our listeners can take out of discussion. I mean from the discussion around fragmentation, persistence, trade off, consensus, I think you really managed to tackle some of the key debate challenges around the connection and disconnection between economic inequality, political inequalities, the role of technologies, and really what is happening in this context of horizontal injustice and what do we need to do, how complex it is, how difficult. And really, I think everything we've been hearing today just really reinforced what Victoria and I want to do within this grand challenge of inequalities is try really to push for new ideas, new ways of tackling inequalities, finding solutions and really shake the debates. So thank you very much for all your contributions. It was absolutely fantastic.
Peter John: Thank you. Thank you very much indeed for inviting me.
Lauren Andres: Thank you.
Victoria Austin: You've been listening to Fair Enough, a podcast from UCL's Grand Challenge of Inequalities. This episode was presented by me, Victoria Austin and Lauren Andres and produced and edited by Annabel Buckland at Decibelle Creative. If you'd like to hear more thought provoking conversations, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. To Explore more about UCL's grand challenge of Inequalities, including our latest news, events and research, just Google UCL's grand challenge of Inequalities. Thanks for listening.
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