Joël N. Christoph is a French-Japanese economist and Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Carr-Ryan Center. He is a PhD researcher in economics at the European University Institute, supported by France, EUI, and Japan-IMF scholarships, and the founder of 10Billion.org, a movement for global public goods. His work bridges AI governance, economics, and human rights, informed by consulting roles for the World Bank and the International Energy Agency and fellowships at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and GovAI. Joël co-edited Responsibility in International Relations with the International Progress Organization and has led research networks such as Effective Thesis and the Equiano Institute. Recognised as an Atlantic Council Bretton Woods 2.0 Fellow, St Gallen Leader of Tomorrow, and World Economic Forum Global Shaper, he serves on advisory boards addressing existential and technological risks. Having lived in ten countries and working in eight languages, Joël brings a global perspective to crafting institutions that align emerging technology with democratic values and fundamental rights. As a Carr-Ryan Fellow, he develops policy frameworks that place citizens, not algorithms, at the heart of economic and political life and advance a future where technological progress serves the public good.
Project: Artificial intelligence platforms increasingly mediate access to work, credit, information, and civic life. My research asks when reliance on these systems becomes so advantageous that opting out is no longer a genuine choice, a tipping point I call algorithmic inevitability. Building on Shoshana Zuboff's analysis of surveillance capitalism and Mathias Risse's work on epistemic rights, the project traces how data extraction, predictive control, and market incentives reinforce each other across finance, labor, and public communication. Through comparative policy analysis and interviews with regulators, technologists, and civil society leaders, I will map these feedback loops, identify windows where intervention is still possible, and design guardrails that let citizens benefit from innovation without surrendering autonomy. Expected outputs include a peer-reviewed article, a Carr-Ryan policy brief, and an open-access toolkit for policymakers worldwide. Proposed measures range from fiduciary duties for AI systems and robust data portability standards to targeted support that lowers the economic cost of opting out. By clarifying when algorithmic inevitability emerges and how democracies can resist it, the project seeks practical pathways that keep human dignity and democratic agency at the center of an AI-saturated economy, advancing the global public good.