Zoë Hitzig, known for her research and writing on the political economy of AI, including a widely discussed op-ed reflecting on her decision to leave OpenAI, will examine how AI systems may reshape where knowledge resides and how decisions are made. As these systems begin to capture and operationalize forms of tacit, experience-based knowledge long embedded in workers and local contexts, information itself may become more concentrated—and with it, power. This shift raises broader questions about how institutions act as information powerbrokers, and what happens when expertise and decision-making move from individuals and local settings into centralized systems.
Hitzig will be joined in conversation with HLS Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies Yochai Benkler to discuss how AI systems may reshape where knowledge resides in the economy.
This is a hybrid event. Please be sure to RSVP to join us in person (Harvard ID holders only) or register to join on Zoom. Light refreshments will be served after the event.
Speakers
Zoë Hitzig is currently a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a former Research Scientist at OpenAI. She earned her PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2023, where she specialized in research on privacy, transparency, and algorithms in markets and communication. Zoë’s poetry, known for its sharp intellect and imaginative breadth, has appeared in prestigious publications such as The New Yorker, London Review of Books, and Boston Review. She is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, including Mezzanine and Not Us Now, which explore themes at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and technology. Zoë combines her creative and analytical talents to investigate how economic theory and poetic expression can illuminate complex social and technological issues. Her work reflects a powerful commitment to experimentation and envisioning new possibilities for society.
Yochai Benkler (Moderator) is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, where he is faculty director of the Program on Law and Political Economy and a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Since the 1990s, he has written about the political economy of digital technologies, focusing on how struggles over commodification or decommodification of access to the basic resources necessary for information, knowledge, and cultural production are a central determinant of freedom in twenty-first century society. His current work focuses on the institutional political economy of capitalism, combining historical and theoretical work to explain the dynamics that drive waves of innovation and productivity growth, social struggle, dislocation, and crisis in market societies. His books include The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press 2006), which won academic awards from the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the McGannon award for social and ethical relevance in communications; Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics (Oxford University Press 2018), and a co-edited volume, A Political Economy of Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2022 (with D. Allen, R. Henderson, L. Downey, and J. Simons)). His forthcoming book is entitled The Global Origins of Capitalism: Power, Productivity, and the Evolution of Modern Market Societies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027).