Words of wisdom on Chinese AI and our responses
The strategy for China is obvious: commoditize your complements. Note that Xi explicitly ties openness to AI “moving from the digital world into the physical world”; the physical world is the world dominated by China, and the country’s lead in areas like robotics is going to massively benefit from widely available AI models.
Along the same lines, China does not want the U.S. to gain an asymmetric advantage in AI; to the extent that China can weaken the U.S. frontier labs while strengthening any and all potential U.S. adversaries so much the better, and it can benefit from the innovation that will attach itself to an open ecosystem.
And in sum:
The better course is clear: first, loosen Fable and Sol restrictions on cybersecurity, and second, ensure that U.S. open weight model makers are on an equal playing field with China. Yes, the frontier labs will kick and scream about this, but the Administration should realize that listening to their histrionics has led the U.S. to a position where U.S. companies are dependent on China for their defenses. Let the frontier labs win by being better; don’t let them define safety or security, or pull up the ladder of humanity’s collective knowledge. China is already hard enough to compete with; letting them carry the standard for openness and innovation is simply giving away our biggest advantage.
That is from Ben Thompson’s Stratechery (gated, but ungated link here).
Monday assorted links
1. “In all three countries, declining places displayed higher animosity prior to salient populist campaigns.” In their tweets.
2. Sunstein on Hayek and conservatism.
3. Jacobian conjecture proved false. Fable found a counterexample that fits inside a tweet. From the strawberry guy: “in the areas that the labs are targeting, we’ve achieved artificial super intelligence. no single human and perhaps all of humanity could compete with this intelligence. once the model gets good enough at training future models this level of intelligence will spread to all domains.”
4. Redux of my CWT with Emily Wilson on The Odyssey.
5. The Great Awokening had a strong upper-class accent (research from Harvard). And which immigrants do citizens prefer?
6. Balkan notes.
7. How to sell your edition of The Odyssey (NYT).
8. Profits!
9. CAISI update.
Whit Stillman’s *Metropolitan* (that was then, this is now)
It is fun to watch/rewatch this 1990 movie circa 2026. It is about New York City debutantes (CT and the Hamptons too), and how they interact with each other. The movie is set a bit earlier in time, perhaps in the mid-1980s, though some scenes hearken back to the 1970s. Of course there is no social media and no cell phones. So the characters do look at each other, and talk to each other, the whole time. People dress up, and social smoking is “a thing.” There is no hook-up culture, as even casual sex has some sort of social implication. Women are seen as vulnerable, and the men occasionally punch each other. People drink. Throughout various scenes, characters debate Jane Austen, Lionel Trilling, and Buñuel (it was not yet recognized that Mansfield Park is an excellent novel). But do they read actual novels, or just the literary criticism? Women can be branded as “sluts.” Nerds had not yet taken over the world, and there is no Jane Street, though toward the end there is one odd scene where the neon lights rather obviously spell out “ELON” in the upper right side of the screen. Coincidence rather than time travel, I am sure. There are no Asians in the group, it seems no Jews, and if anyone is gay he or she remains in the closet. People of modest income had big apartments, and the so-called wealthy were not very rich at all, though they could afford black tie and white tie attire.
Was everyone happier and better off back then? Did they have deeper understandings of the world? Did they treat each other like heartless beasts? Would you eschew one of their parties and stay at home and scroll Twitter? You can watch this film and ponder those questions to your heart’s content. Alternatively, you could go to a debutante ball, which it turns out still exists. Which of those has been your choice?
Democrats are more politically segregated than are Republicans
We estimate the extent of workplace political segregation in the United States by merging data covering over 45 million workers. We present four main findings. First, partisans are segregated by workplace. The average Democrat’s coworkers are 11.7 percentage points (pp; 95% confidence interval (CI) [10.6, 12.8]) more Democratic than the average Republican’s. After controlling for geography, industry and occupation, segregation is 2.9 pp [2.7, 3.1], comparable to analogously estimated gender segregation (2.8 pp [2.6, 3.0]). Second, segregation is largest among the politically active (political donors: 14.8 pp [13.2, 16.4] versus non-donors: 11.6 pp [10.5, 12.7]) and those with more market power (senior executives: 14.7 pp [13.4, 16.1]). Third, Republicans experience higher exposure to Democrats than vice versa: the average Republican’s coworkers are 50% Democratic versus 32% Republican for the average Democrat. Fourth, political segregation has changed little over time (2012: 11.1 pp [10.0, 12.2] versus 2024: 11.0 pp [10.0, 12.0]).
That is from a recent paper by Justin Frake, Reuben Hurst, and Max Kagan. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Emergent Ventures winners, 56th cohort
Audrey London, Los Angeles, to write a book on water in California.
Seyi Oluwasanmi, London, to bring Brits to SF to learn tech.
Thomas Haferlach, Berlin, payments and compute layer for the long tail of AI apps.
Juan Ramón Egea Fernández, Andalusia, tech.
Teo Spiro, Israel, AI and biology.
Amitav Krishna, suburban Ontario, 14, quantum.
Jake Prokopets, 18, Orlando, AI and labor markets.
Wendi Yan, NYC, science and the visual arts.
Luke Peoples, 15, Sydney, to edit the UI directly.
Malwina Lewera, Poland, orbital space debris.
Wilhelm Hedenskog, 18, Gothenburg, Sweden, AI evaluations.
Alex Petropoulos and Max Reddel, Brussels, Preparing Europe for Transformative AI.
Giovanni De Lillo, 17, Naples, multi-agent AI orchestration for regulated enterprise (Hypereum).
Markets in everything?
Peter Brook‘s five-hour-plus film adaptation of “The Mahabharata” is set for a BFI Blu-ray release on Aug. 10, presented in high definition from a new 4K restoration of the 1989 production.
The release centres on the triptych version of the film, running 332 minutes, which sits between Brook’s three-hour cinema cut and the six-hour television version he shot concurrently. Based on the ancient Hindu epic, the film was originally produced by Brook with screenwriters Jean-Claude Carrière and Marie-Hélène Estienne, and features an international cast drawn from 16 nationalities.
Here is the Variety article, but will there be a version suitable for U.S. players? The work is highly recommended, real genius. For the pointer I thank Sam Mendelsohn.
Sunday assorted links
1. Female promotions and the academic pipeline.
2. NEW MONKEYS.
3. Those new service sector jobs — “One nanny isn’t cutting it anymore. Some parents are spending upward of $250,000 on teams for their children. Luxury services offer potty-training, baby chefs and bike-riding lessons.” (WSJ).
4. There some English people with the name “Ralph” who simply have decided to pronounce it like “Rafe.”
Building luxury homes is good for the poor
Tej Parikh writing in the FT:
…high-end developments unlock long housing chains. As higher-income households move into newly built units, they free up older properties, raising supply and slashing prices for middle- and lower-end housing through a process known as filtering. Numerous international studies underscore this positive ripple effect.
One published last year tracked households that moved into a newly built 512-unit condominium tower in Honolulu, Hawaii. It found that the building created at least 557 vacancies in older and cheaper apartments across the city in just three years, with market-rate units more likely to release the largest chains.
Filtering can also be widespread. A 2021 study in Helsinki using geo-coded population data found that every 100 new market-rate units in the city centre led to around 60 units becoming available in the city’s bottom half of neighbourhoods by income. An analysis across all homes in Sweden over several decades concluded that “new homes, even those initially primarily inhabited by rich people, lead to substantial trickle-down effects that also benefit the poor”.
Other US studies highlight how market-rate developments benefit less well-to-do local residents by lowering housing costs. In San Francisco, a 2021 paper found new developments lowered the risk of eviction notices for residents in rent-stabilised housing. Even “luxury” developments in New York City — which Mamdani has criticised — have been shown to contribute to lower local rents and sales prices.
or David Attenborough:
Cross-ethnic casting
I complained about the casting of The Odyssey per se (the blind beggar was best), but in general I do not mind cross-ethnic casting. I am glad Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, Dev Patel played David Copperfield, Denzel Washington played Macbeth, black and Latino actors play white parts in Hamilton, and that Morgan Freeman can play God well (God himself would not be “white,” but God as black is nonetheless a conscious choice), and there was Jessye Norman (among others) singing and playing many traditionally white roles on the opera stage.
Recently in a private conversation I suggested that Nabeel Qureshi be cast as the next James Bond. He has a British accent, was born in (northern!) England, is tall and is good-looking. He does not remind anyone of Roger Moore. He is old enough where you could believe he has some experience as a spy, and at the baccarat table, but young enough where he could do those stunts without it seeming ridiculous.
I recall the talk of a black Bond, a notion which likely would end up dull and cliched. But a Bond of Pakistani ethnic origin? Now that would occasion some debate.
I am not saying it always works. I likely would object to a remake of Zulu with an all-Chinese cast. Or there can be major cultural mistakes which are not cross-ethnic, such as casting a Liverpudlian in the role of a London elite. Everyone in The Sopranos should at least be pretending to fit their roles, and indeed Tony himself grew up in New Jersey. I would have done fine in a cameo role.
How does social media change people?
I would not trust the results of this (or any) paper on this topic very much, but it is good to see some inquiry along different dimensions than the usual:
Past research explored the beneficial and harmful effects of social media (SM), but no study has investigated how SM might change people’s identities. Authors suggest that SM is a catalyst for a shift in two individual values, achievement and conformity, transforming the fabric of our societies. A difference-in-differences analysis found that countries with higher SM adoption compared to their culturally similar country show an increase in achievement and conformity orientation. Next, authors manipulated SM use and established a causal link between SM use and the activation of achievement and conformity values in Facebook users. These findings were replicated with objective SM usage data, and the pertinent mechanism was explored: people’s SM use increases achievement and conformity orientation through an increased need for approval, particularly for those who self-ruminate. Findings suggest that SM use contributes to the emergence of a societal culture that places an emphasis on achievement-seeking and conformity.
That is by Ertugrul Uysal, Sascha Alavi, and Valéry Bezençon. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Saturday assorted links
1. How Roman concrete lasted for so long.
2. All restaurants in Germany are worthy of five stars?
3. They are making improvements to Refine.
4. New limits on graduate student visas? Should we/can we make the PhD three years only?
Trial Lawyers Lobby Against Autonomous Vehicles
Roughly 37,000–40,000 Americans die in auto accidents every year. We now have large‑scale, real‑world evidence—from Waymo and a joint analysis with Swiss Re—that driverless operations can be substantially safer than matched human driving within their current operating domains. The latest data show that over 220 million miles driven, Waymo vehicles–in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta–have 94% fewer serious injuries, 82% fewer air bag deployments, and 93% fewer pedestrian injuries. The evidence is not fully independent, but it is unusually transparent, large‑scale evidence.
So with thousands of lives annually in the balance who is against autonomous vehicles (AVs)? Trial lawyers. Remarkably the trial lawyers saw the writing on the wall very early and the have been lobbying against AVs for nearly a decade! The American Association for Justice, the trial lawyers’ lobby, has been a prominent opponent to AV legislation (see also reports here). (They have been joined by Democrats worried about labor and demanding that heavy trucks be excluded).
The trial lawyers earn a huge amount litigating ordinary auto accidents–Annual U.S. auto insurance payouts (liability + PIP/MedPay) are on the order of $180–220B and trial lawyers are very eager to retain the right to sue car manufacturers for product liability. In my view, product liability isn’t useful as a safety device in this field. Instead, the solution is simple. Every car should be required to be insured, regardless of driver. Indeed, Waymo vehicles are already insured at $5 million liability coverage per vehicle, far higher levels than most human drivers are covered.
The UK’s Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 does basically this–a single insurer covers the vehicle whether the human or the automated system is driving; the victim is compensated directly by the insurer, no need to establish product defect; the insurer then subrogates against the manufacturer if the software was at fault. Victims get paid fast, manufacturers face the cost of their defects through recoveries and premiums, and the high-transaction costs (i.e. lawyer fees!) and messy manufacturer-versus-victim litigation is replaced by insurer-versus-manufacturer bargaining between repeat players who settle efficiently.
The great thing about this system is that insurance almost certainly deters better than tort: fleets generate data that makes experience rating precise, so insurers become continuous safety regulators, whereas litigation delivers a noisy, lagged, lottery like signal depending on safety-irrelevant factors of the jury and the locale.
We have the best data on Waymo, Tesla data is murkier but note how well this works with the insurance system. Let the insurers decide how much to charge Tesla robotaxis and FSD drivers–they will internalize the externality far better than tort lawyers. In short, insurance works great for accident victims but not for trial lawyers. Indeed, if the trial lawyers have their way accident victims will continue to be buried in an invisible graveyard.
Hat tip: Andy Hall and Jon Slotkin.
What should I ask Luis Garicano?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. From Wikipedia:
Luis Garicano Gabilondo (pronounced [ˈlwis ɣaɾiˈkano]; born 1967) is a Spanish economist and politician who was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2022. He was also vice president of Renew Europe and vice president of the European political party Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE Party). Before entering politics, he was a professor of strategy and economics at IE Business School in Madrid and at the London School of Economics (LSE). After leaving the European Parliament he has returned to academia as a visiting professor at Columbia Business School and at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2023, returned to LSE as full professor at the School of Public Policy.
He is one of the leading European economic liberals, here is his home page. Here is his Google scholar page. Here is Luis on Twitter. he also has a very good book coming out called Messy Jobs, co-authored with Jim Li and Yanhui Wu. So what should I ask him?
The small business boom
Across the country, founders like Ms. Winkler are powering an entrepreneurial renaissance.
Jump-started by the pandemic, when a confluence of factors including mass layoffs and remote work led to a flood of business creation, and supercharged by the rise of artificial intelligence, start-up activity is booming after a decades-long slump.
Americans filed 5.7 million applications last year to start new businesses, according to the Census Bureau, the most in the two decades the government has kept track. New business applications through the first half of this year continued to climb…
More recently, there are signals that A.I. is adding fuel.
A recent paper from economists at the University of British Columbia and the Stockholm School of Economics found that generative A.I. was “spurring entrepreneurial activity” in the United States, both by giving rise to new ventures built around the technology and by making it cheaper to start enterprises.
“A.I. tools can do very many different things very well,” said Jan Bena, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the study’s authors. “That’s the reason why you see so much entry.”
According to a recent report from Gusto, a small-business payroll and benefits service, nearly 60 percent of founders on its platform who started businesses last year said they used A.I., and half said the technology made it cheaper and faster.
Here is more from Sydney Ember at the NYT. Via Josef.
*The Odyssey*, the movie (no real spoilers)
I can’t say I loved it. The Circe scene was excellent, Cyclops was good, and the battles in Troy were well done. But most of the roles were miscast. I like Matt Damon, but he is too “Good Will Hunting” to play Odysseus. The character did not cohere. (Compare to Ralph Fiennes in the superior The Return.) Zendaya’s role was superfluous. Worst of all was Calypso, who reminded me of the kind of chick you might meet at a Tupperware party in the Hamptons. At least half of the dialogue was lame and contrary to the spirit of the Mycenaean world. Some of the sea and boat footage was good. I strongly disliked the changes made to the ending.
There is enough energy, effort, and money put into the thing to make it eminently watchable on the big screen. And if this were a new director, you would think he had great promise. But relative to both the reviews and where most expectations were placed, this has to count as a disappointment.