The Optimization Trap: Efficiency, Complexity, and Systemic Resilience

This interactive, cross-cutting conversation will examine when advances in efficiency, automation, and coordination strengthen systemic resilience and when they instead create complexity, hidden dependencies, or the loss of structural margins. Although the topic stems from our spectrum programming, it applies to various technical and institutional arenas and will provide insight that transcends any single discipline.

The conference is intended to frame an important and insufficiently examined problem, test it against experience, and identify questions that deserve further research and policy attention. It is not premised on the view that efficiency is inherently hostile to resilience or that a single institutional remedy is already known.

The Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Colorado Law School.