Thursday assorted links
Do Americans really hate AI?
We might be heading towards a populist backlash towards AI, but we’re not there yet. Outside the tech bubble, Americans really don’t care about AI yet.
AI is Americans’ 29th most important issue, according to the fantastic survey @davidshor ran that everyone is rightly looking at.
It’s not surprising that Americans will answer sentiment questions about AI negatively, as they’ve been negative towards tech for a while. But it’s a big leap from negative sentiment to meaningful political action.
Americans have been negative on social media for 10 years, and there has been no meaningful political action. And that’s despite all the other hallmarks of backlash people are saying about AI—violent extremists (people forget there was a shooting at YouTube HQ), protests, etc.
My prediction: we will get real populist backlash to AI when the unemployment moves by, say, 2 percentage points and people see it as caused by AI.
That is part of a longer tweet from Andy Hall.
AGI Could Lower Interest Rates
Standard models predict that expectations of artificial general intelligence (AGI) should elevate long-term interest rates. I show that this prediction need not hold. I develop a heterogeneous-agent asset pricing model in which AGI, or more broadly, transformative AI (TAI) capable of automating most human labor, can lower interest rates even as it dramatically accelerates growth. Under baseline calibrations, the risk-free rate falls to near zero despite growth rising from 2% to 11%, and the equity premium expands from 6% to over 20%. The effect on yields is negative and muted for all maturities, even under aggressive assumptions about the speed of AI adoption. These results advise caution when interpreting long-term bond yields as a signal of market expectations of transformative AI.
That is from a new paper by Caleb Maresca of NYU. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
William Stanley Jevons as polymath
In the 1860s Jevons built a Logical Abacus, sometimes called a logical piano, a kind of early computer that could perform (some kinds of) logical operations faster than humans could. It is held in the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University, and you can think of its structure and operation as broadly akin to a player piano in music. It was limited in its powers, and geared mainly toward replicating Boolean logic, but extreme in its ultimate ambitions. Jevons understood the potential. In his written presentation of the project, Jevons cites the work of Charles Babbage, and noted that “material machinery is capable, in theory at least, of rivalling the labours of the most practiced mathematicians in all branches of their science. Mind thus seems able to impress some of its highest attributes upon matter, and to create its own rival in the wheels and levers of an insensible machine.” Jevons understood that science would be able to tackle some of the most difficult projects, and he wanted to be on as many of those frontiers as possible. He understood that his own work was a mere beginning, and he wanted to press forward as much as possible.25See Jevons (1870, the quotation from p.498), and also Maas (2005, chapter six). For a general background on Boolean logic, see Hailperin (1986).
Jevons also studied molecular motion in liquids and developed the concept of “pedesis,” a precursor of what we now call Brownian motion. That said, Jevons thought his pedesis was an electrical phenomenon related to osmosis, and so he turned out to be incorrect in his fundamental hypotheses. Nonetheless, this topic, like the others, showed he was an observant mind and obsessed with developing theories to explain anything and everything. He wasn’t just a pedant, rather he made real contribution to a number of scientific fields above and beyond economics.26On Jevons on pedesis and Brownian motion, see Brush (1968).
Jevons also was a “born collector” in the words of Keynes, and an extreme bibliomaniac. He accumulated thousands of books, and he lined the walls of his house and attic with them, and also stored them in piles in the attic, which became a problem for his wife upon his passing.
That is from my recent generative book The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution.
Justin Wolfers update
Wolfers’s moment of clarity ultimately sent him down a road less traveled by academic economists: creating his own media company.
On Wednesday, Wolfers, 53, announced that he had founded Platypus Economics, an independent media start-up that aims to reach a mainstream audience. The name is a nod to his Australian roots, cheekily referring to the odd-looking mammal native to his birthplace. He’s funding the business himself, using the income from his textbook sales.
…To get his content channels off the ground and build an audience, Wolfers is teaming up with Initial Digital, the digital media division of the Initial Group, an entertainment company that’s backed by the private equity firm TPG.
Here is the full NYT story.
ICE has not improved U.S. labor markets
We provide the first causal, national empirical analysis of the labor market impacts of heightened immigration enforcement during the second Trump administration. Enforcement increased everywhere, but, we take advantage of the fact that the increases have been uneven across geographic areas to classify areas as treated or control and then implement an event study and difference-in-differences design. Areas that experienced particularly large increases in the number of arrests also experienced a decrease in work among likely undocumented immigrants who remain in the U.S., compared to areas with smaller increases in arrests. We find no evidence of positive spillover effects to U.S.-born workers and U.S.-born workers who work in immigrant-heavy sectors are harmed.
That is from a new NBER working paper by Elizabeth Cox & Chloe N. East.
Wednesday assorted links
Korean banana markets in everything
Did you know Korea sells “one-a-day” banana packs?
Instead of every banana ripening at once, each one is at a different stage.
One is ready today.
The next one is ready tomorrow.
The last one is still spiritually in college, “experimenting.”
Simple. Genius. Solves the entire banana problem.
What do you think? Would you prefer your bananas this way?
Here is the tweet from Sovey.
What I’ve been reading
1. David Narrett, The Cherokees in War & at Peace 1670-1840. An excellent book, one of the two best books on a single Native American tribe I have read. The book actually aims at explaining the Cherokees and enlightening the reader – how rare. In 1700, there were no more than 20,000 Cherokees, mostly in the southeast, so it is amazing what the author was able to come up with. Will make the year’s best of non-fiction list.
2. Boyd van Dijk, Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions. A very good look at the negotiations behind the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and just how driven by national self-interest they were, including colonial motives from the major colonial powers, who wished to retain stronger rights to put down uprisings. The Soviets wanted strong protections against torture (!), as they thought this might limit the power of the United States to bomb their population into submission. Yet nuclear war ended up being permitted, largely at the insistence of the U.S. And so on. The colonial subjects of course had not much say in any of this.
3. Jim Windolf, Where the Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other — and the World. An excellent and engaging book, which even serious fans can learn from. The first time Paul McCartney heard the music of Bob Dylan he called it “folk crap,” to his brother Mike. Dylan and McCartney grew closest in 1971, when Paul was making the Ram album in NYC. Music from Big Pink is one of Paul’s favorite albums of all time. Thingumybob, first composed by Paul in 1968, later received accretions from Harrison and Dylan and became an odd three-party composition, albeit never released on a recording. And here is Paul’s account of bumping into Dylan at the airport.
If you wish to think about the Roman Empire more, there is Pliny & Co., How to Make Money: An Ancient Guide to Wealth Management.
Thomas Asbridge, The Black Death: A Global History of Humanity’s Most Devastating Pandemic is a good overview.
There is also Devon Cox, Beyond Beauty: A Portrait of John Singer Sargent.
Tuesday assorted links
Rose Farts and the Invisible Hand
In Modern Principles, Tyler and I show the invisible hand by telling the story of how the increase in oil prices in the 1970s encouraged millions of adjustments in how goods were produced and allocated, everything from an increased use of brick for driveways to a movement of the flower market from the US, which relied on heating greenhouses, to warmer climes like Columbia and Kenya. See the I, Rose video!
The FT has an amusing update:
“When my sheep break wind, it smells of roses,” he said, recounting one of the more bizarre and far-flung consequences of the decision by US President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bomb Iran in February.
Since Tehran hit back by firing drones and missiles at US allies in the Gulf — grounding cargo flights and closing off the Strait of Hormuz through which booming east African trade with the region used to flow — Mahihu has been forced to jettison millions of rose stems.
The best study to date on school phone bans
Schools across the U.S. have sharply restricted student use of phones during the school day. We evaluate one type of restriction—lockable phone pouches—using nationwide data combining large-scale surveys, GPS pings, standardized test scores, and school administrative records, along with sales records from the largest pouch provider. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that pouch adoption substantially reduces phone use as measured by GPS pings and teacher reports. In the first year after adoption, disciplinary incidents increase and student subjective well-being falls, consistent with short-term disruption. However, effects on well-being become positive in later years and disciplinary effects fade. For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero. High schools see modest positive effects, particularly in math, while middle schools see small negative effects. We find little evidence of effects on school attendance, self-reported classroom attention, or perceived online bullying.
In sum, it is fine to want to run a school that way, but do not expect huge educational gains, if any. The evidence on this is accumulating, but many seem unable to accept the results. In any case it is not worthy of a major moral crusade.
Here is the NBER working paper, with top-tier researchers involved I might add, namely .
Is psychotherapy underdiscussed these days? (from my email)
I listened to your recent conversation with Arthur C. Brooks and found myself struggling with his core premise. His framing of happiness seems to reduce it to something like a biological or behavioural optimisation problem, which feels quite far from how psychotherapy traditionally and historically understands it.
I tried to find where he engages with psychotherapy as a discipline. The only reference I could locate was a passing mention of mindfulness-based CBT in a Free Press piece. But approaches like MCBT, while valuable, sit within a narrower, symptom-focused, behavioural tradition. They are not really representative of the broader psychotherapeutic field, which is less about “happiness” and more about understanding conflict, ambivalence, and the structure of the self.
That omission seems important. Sigmund Freud’s answer to the “happiness problem” is almost a rugpull: human beings are fundamentally conflicted, and any attempt to engineer sustained happiness runs up against unconscious forces, compromise formations, and the reality principle. Indeed, the goal of therapy to Freud, is to turn misery into “ordinary unhappiness”.
Later clinicians have developed this further. Jonathan Shedler, for example, has written compellingly about how psychodynamic therapy aims not at happiness per se, but at increasing the capacity to feel a full range of emotions without defensive distortion. I’m sure you’ve come across him – he’s absolutely brilliant.
It made me wonder whether there’s something slightly neurotic, even Bryan Johnson-esque, in trying to treat happiness as if it were a macronutrient to be optimised. That framing risks flattening the very thing it’s trying to measure.
PS. I liked that you asked him about the price of his book – and I respected his response too!
That is from Adam Goott.
What should I ask Martha Nussbaum?
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with her. Most of all focusing on her recent book The Republic of Love: Opera and Political Freedom.
So what should I ask her?
Trade and the End of Antiquity
What was the role of trade, and how did economic activity evolve at the End of Antiquity, when political power shifts away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe and the Middle East? To answer those questions, we assemble a database of hundreds of thousands of ancient coins from the fourth to the tenth century, estimate a dynamic model of trade and money where coins gradually diffuse along trade routes, and recover granular regional trade and real consumption time series. Our estimates suggest that: Mediterranean trade was disrupted by the newly formed border between Islam and Christianity; economic activity shifts away from the Mediterranean starting in the fifth century; real consumption peaks in the Middle East in the eighth century; and by the end of the ninth century, Atlantic regions from Islamic Spain to Frankish northwestern Europe have become the wealthiest regions of the ancient western world.
That is from a new NBER working paper by .