INDEP x Espaces Marx online Talk with Hugo Pompougnac and Hannah Bensussan – Uses of Demand Forecasting for Planning Ecological Transformation

This event is done in partnership between INDEP and Espaces Marx.

This event will take place in English.

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Two arguments are put forward in defense of planning today. On the one hand, the ecological argument states that the transition cannot be undertaken by private actors seeking to maximize the return on their investments, but rather needs a public actor to plan the coordinated transformation of the system of provisioning. On the other hand, the technological argument states that information technologies are the solution to the knowledge problem that planned economies once faced. However, these two arguments are often presented in isolation. Few studies consider how these technologies might be useful for ecological planning, or whether ecological planning could address its own knowledge problems thanks to these technologies.

Although we do not aim to « write recipes for the cook shops of the future », it is possible to reflect on these questions by opening the black boxes of these technologies and their institutional use. By examining the case of forecasting, we first consider statistical forecasting techniques in 20th-century for state planning, and their actual development with AI techniques for corporate planning. We then explore different forms of ecological planning, and ask which forecasting techniques is/could be helpful to overcome knowledge problems faced by ecological transformation.

Hugo Pompougnac is an engineer and researcher in the field of neural network compilation. He is also president of Espaces Marx, where he works at the intersection of the humanities, mathematical sciences, and public policy.

Hannah Bensussan is a political Economist, postdoc at the University of Saint Gallen. Her work focuses on digital capitalism and ecological planning.