Tuesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. o3 beats master geoguesser.  And GPT as therapist.

2. “To support our work in analyzing AI’s economic impacts, we’re pleased to announce the formation of the Anthropic Economic Advisory Council. This group of distinguished economists will provide input on new areas of research for our Economic Index.”  Link here, I am happy to be a member.

3. The secret liberalization of animal drugs. See also Alex here.

4. Designing Human-AI Collaboration: A Sufficient-Statistic Approach.

5. Kaleb bets against the gorilla.

6, Abundance is now a #1 bestseller.

7. “So I’m going to govern in econometrics.”  I am not as reassured by this as are many people I know.

In defense of an online life

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is a recent piece of mine at The Free Press (it has been great fun writing there by the way).  Here is one excerpt:

Why do I spend so much of my time with email, group chats, and also writing for larger audiences such as Free Press readers? I ask myself that earnestly, and I have arrived at a pretty good answer. I believe that by spending time online I will meet and befriend a collection of individuals around the world, who are pretty much exactly the people I want to be in touch with. And then I will be in touch with them regularly.

I call them “the perfect people for me.”

I recognize that many of these communications are online, and thus they are “thinner” than many more local, face-to-face relationships. Yet I do end up meeting most of these people, and with great pleasure. That, in turn, enhances the quality of the online communications. And frankly, if forced to choose, I would rather have thinner relationships with “the perfect people for me” than regular bear hugs and beer guzzlings with “people who are in the 87th percentile for me.”

The internet, in other words, has invented a new means of human connection, characterized by “the perfect people for me.” For me, it’s people who are into analytical thinking and tech and AI and music and economics, and much more. For others? It can be Survivor obsessives or vegans or knitters or Survivor obsessives who are vegan and love to knit. The point is that there is a niche for all 8 billion of us. And now we know where to find each other.

And it turns out we value that very, very highly. So highly that we are willing to obsess over our little devices known as smartphones.

Recommended, especially to those who read things on-line.

Monday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. The evolution of rattlesnake venom.

2. In 2022, for better or worse, it was the American public who supported masks on planes.

3. “Yields on short-term government debt have dipped into negative territory in recent days as traders bet that the Swiss National Bank will respond with interest rate cuts. Two-year Swiss yields, which reflect expectations for interest rates, traded marginally below zero on Friday.”  From the FT.

4. The research on fluoride and IQ.

5. Ethnographic Records, Folklore, and AI.

6. “…Americans in their 20s are about half as likely to adopt their spouses’ names as were their octogenarian grandparents.”

7. o3 on 100 human males vs. angry gorilla.

The Political Economy of Protective Labor Laws for Women

by  Tyler Cowen in

From a new NBER working paper:

During the first half of the twentieth century, many US states enacted laws restricting women’s labor market opportunities, including maximum hours restrictions, minimum wage laws, and night-shift bans. The era of so-called protective labor laws came to an end in the 1960s as a result of civil rights reforms. In this paper, we investigate the political economy behind the rise and fall of these laws. We argue that the main driver behind protective labor laws was men’s desire to shield themselves from labor market competition. We spell out the mechanism through a politico-economic model in which singles and couples work in different sectors and vote on protective legislation. Restrictions are supported by single men and couples with male sole earners who compete with women for jobs. We show that the theory’s predictions for when protective legislation will be introduced are well supported by US state-level evidence.

That is by Matthias Doepke, Hanno Foerster, Anne Hannusch, and Michèle Tertilt.

Spain fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewable energy for the first time on April 16, with wind, solar, and hydro meeting all peninsular electricity demand during a weekday. Five days later, solar set a new record, generating 20,120 MW of instantaneous power – covering 78.6% of demand and 61.5% of the grid mix.

Here is the full article.

Addendum: Here is a sequel report, in Spanish, via Mario.  And in English.

Yale Faculty v. Administrators

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Yale has approximately one administrator for every undergraduate student (see also here and here). Years of simmering tension about the growth of administration relative to faculty has now been brought forward. President Trump has threatened to cut funding to Yale, the Yale administration has threatened to stop hiring faculty and raises, some faculty are now threatening to revolt.

Over 100 Yale professors are calling for the University administration to freeze new administrative hires and commission an independent faculty-led audit to ensure that the University prioritizes academics.

In a letter written to University President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel, signatories addressed the “collision of two opposing forces: extraordinary financial strength and runaway bureaucratic expansion.”

…Professor Juan de la Mora, a letter’s signee, said that a significant number of Yale professors believe that the institution is using funding for “improper” purposes and neglecting the school’s founding principles of emphasizing faculty and students.

…Professor of Philosophy Daniel Greco mirrored these sentiments, recognizing the increase in administrative spending in Yale’s budget.

Greco said these spending habits have faculty “puzzled,” as they hear of the money being spent but do not see a change in their day-to-day work.

Professor of Law Sarath Sanga, author of the letter, wrote to the News that over the last two decades, “faculty hiring has stagnated while administrative ranks have by some estimates more than doubled–outpacing peer institutions.”

University are supposed to be faculty-led but over the last several decades most have been taken over by administrators–perhaps we shall see some change.

The new Stripe stablecoin product

by  Tyler Cowen

Stripe, a global payments platform, is building a new US dollar stablecoin product for companies based outside the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe in a move that may further expand the footprint of the dollar around the world.

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison confirmed the product on X, posting an invitation for companies interested in testing the solution. The move gained traction after Stripe recently received regulatory approval to acquire the stablecoin payments network Bridge.

Bridge’s network competes with banks and companies that use the SWIFT system, a global financial messaging network that facilitates international wire transfers. Two former Coinbase executives, Zach Abrams and Sean Yu, co-founded the company in 2022.

Here is the full article.  Note this is a product to ease stablecoin use, not a separate stablecoin from Stripe.

Is it genetics that will give you freedom from the AIs?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I sometimes wonder how good the AIs will be at predicting our productivity and our future courses of action.

Let’s say an advanced AI has your genome, a bunch of your test scores, and has plenty of video of you interviewing.  How well does the AI really understand you?

To be clear, I am not asking about the capabilities of the AI, rather I am querying about human legibility.  And my intuition is that the AI still will be surprised by you pretty often.  It will not know who is “the next Einstein.”

Some of the freedom you retain may — perhaps counterintuitively — come from your genome.  For purposes of argument, consider the speculative assumption that rare copy variants are important in genetics, and thus in your individuality.  In that case, the AI likely cannot get enough data to have a very good read on what your genes imply.  Even if the AI has everybody’s genome (unlikely), perhaps there just are not many people around with your rare copy variants.

It may also be the case — again speculatively — that rare copy variants are especially important for “top performers” (and mass murderers?).

So when the AIs come to scan you and evaluate you, perhaps it is the very genetic component that will protect you from high predictability.  Of course that scenario is the opposite of what you usually read.  In standard accounts, your genes make you a kind of captive or epistemic prisoner of the AI, a’la Gattaca.

But in practice you still might feel quite free and undetermined, even after receiving the report from the AI.  And it might be your genes you need to thank for that.