The Limits of Computer Decision-Making: Where Human Judgment Still Matters

In the 1940s, mathematicians and engineers set out to build machines that could make critical decisions under uncertainty. Within a decade, they had invented tools that not only launched modern computer science but quietly rewrote what it means for a human being to make a "rational" choice.

Benjamin Recht, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, will draw on his new book The Irrational Decision to trace how these academic rules for machines came to define rationality in economics, public policy, and everyday culture.

Ben will walk through where automated decision systems have thrived, from accelerating computers to regulating pharmaceuticals to powering e commerce, and where they break down. The pattern he has found is consistent: these systems excel in well defined spaces with clear rules and measurable goals, and turn brittle or absurd outside them.

The talk will close with a genuinely open question. How do we keep using these powerful tools without surrendering human judgment and agency in the process?