Technology, Culture, and Power Speaker Series: Gil Eyal

Join Stanford PACS and the Cyber Policy Center for a monthly gathering that explores critical insights on the intersections and implications of technology and society. The Technology, Culture, and Power Speaker Series is a thought-provoking forum on the Stanford campus featuring leading experts and scholars examining the interactions of digital technologies, culture, and inequality. Please arrive 5 minutes early to avoid disrupting the guest speaker.

Location:

Durand Building, Room 450

Stanford University

496 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Join us for a discussion with Gil Eyal and Anna Thieser on the evolving landscape of AI safety. Analyzing 168 job postings from the career platform 80000hours.org, this talk challenges the notion of AI safety as a field moving toward fixed professional boundaries. Instead, Thieser and Eyal explore AI safety as an interstitial network, bridging academia, industry, government, and nonprofit sectors. Their research reveals a "trading zone" shaped by strategic ambiguity, where AI safety professionals navigate inherent tensions—advancing AI while mitigating its risks, leveraging the same methods for safety that may also pose threats. Through this lens, they examine how hiring practices seek candidates who embody paradoxical qualities: academic rigor and industry innovation, independent thought and team collaboration, technical expertise and effective communication. Rather than a temporary state, they argue that these tensions define AI safety as an interstitial space that attracts multiple actors.

Gil Eyal’s work spans the sociology of science, medicine, professions, intellectuals, and knowledge—fields he collectively terms the "sociology of expertise." He examines not only who is recognized as an expert but also what enables expert performance in various domains. His research focuses on contemporary mistrust of expertise, from climate science skepticism to vaccine hesitancy, arguing that the politicization of science is a recurring phenomenon driven by the scientization of politics. Eyal co-directs the Mellon Seminar on "Trust and Mistrust of Science and Experts," fostering interdisciplinary dialogue on these issues. He also explores the intersection of basic science and medical practice, particularly in the field of precision medicine, as co-director of Columbia University’s Precision Medicine & Society program.

Request disability accommodations and access information here.

This event is made possible with support from the Humanities Seed Grant from Stanford Public Humanities.

Host or Publisher Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society