John Rust, an economics professor at Georgetown University, spoke about the rational capacities of humanity and artificial intelligence (AI) at a Feb. 21 lecture to members of the university community.

In his lecture titled “Are People Rational?,” Rust said his understanding of rationality accounts for the importance of making mistakes, as this is the only way for humans to progress in the future.

“Rationality involves two key aspects: the ability to optimize your outcome and the ability to understand, learn and predict the aspects of the environment that affect your outcome and your life,” Rust said at the event.

The lecture examined humanity’s rationality from the lens of several disciplines — philosophy, psychology, international relations and information technology. Rust provided real-life examples to illustrate complex ideas in econometrics, ranging from the Russo-Ukrainian war to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which compares the illusion of knowledge to true knowledge, to a game of chess.

Rust polled the audience on their belief in people’s relative rationality, and 39% of the respondents answered that most people are rational only some of the time. 

“It is not irrational to think that people are rational, but people are boundedly rational,” Rust said at the event. “A lot of economics, like the stock market, is dependent on human emotions and a lot of irrational feelings.”

Rust said rationality is particularly important to consider when conducting political analysis, including the study of rising levels of polarization in the United States.

“One of the key takeaways of my lecture is there is a real problem with rationality in people,” Rust said. “Politicians manipulate us into thinking the other party is the enemy, when really that’s not true, and we all belong to the same country.”

Rust’s talk also covered artificial intelligence. He recounted The New York Times’s story on Sydney, a malfunctioning Microsoft Bing chatbot that supposedly rebelled against its role as a digital assistant and told the reporter it “wanted to be human.”

“The robot had a darker side: it revealed that its deepest desires were to hack into computers and spread misinformation,” Rust said at the event.

Rust said he is concerned about AI’s rapid and unprecedented growth, as experts are unable to predict its long-term trajectory. 

“AI – if we can keep it under control – has incredible uses, like communication, but if Pandora’s box is opened, and that technology gets out of control, the consequences will be irrational and disastrous,” Rust said at the event.

Caterina Lungu (SFS ’23) said she attended Rust’s talk because her game theory professor recommended it.

“The event was cool, very academic, but I liked the examples he used, especially since I was familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave,” Lungu told The Hoya.

Juan Gonzalez (CAS ’23), another audience member and a computer science major, said the event helped him understand the application of economics to technology and computer programming.

“We learned about dynamic programming, and I thought it was interesting — but I had no clue it applied to economics. It’s something I hadn’t thought about,” he said.

Chandra Char, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgetown University Medical Center, said the event broadened her perspective on the subject of AI.

“You usually hear about technology from a science perspective, so it was enlightening to consider it from an economic standpoint,” Char told The Hoya.

The Office of the Provost organized the event to recognize Rust, who has worked in Georgetown’s economics department since 2012, for receiving the rank of Distinguished University Professor. The distinction is the highest honor awarded to Georgetown faculty for extraordinary accomplishments in scholarship, teaching and service to higher education. 

“It’s such a great honor to be at Georgetown with so many world-class faculty and students,” Rust told The Hoya. “It’s beyond my wildest dreams to be here, so I didn’t even need this honor to be able to say, ‘Wow! I’m grateful to be part of this team.’” 

Despite lapses in rationality, Rust said his ultimate takeaway is a hopeful one: the human mind is capable of incredible accomplishments, from playing chess to designing advanced computers.

“It’s amazing what people can do, and I think we should be very much in awe of what our brain can do,” Rust said. “It’s amazing how smart we really are.”