~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (551)

As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms society, understanding factors that influence AI receptivity is increasingly important. The current research investigates which types of consumers have greater AI receptivity. Contrary to expectations revealed in four surveys, cross country data and six additional studies find that people with lower AI literacy are typically more receptive to AI. This lower […] The post Lower Artificial Intelligence Literacy Predicts Greater...

1. Trump repeals the Biden Executive Order on AI. 2. Artificial Intelligence Asset Pricing Models. 3. No concrete news on tariffs is good news. 4. Less post-training on DeepSeek? And other claims about DeepSeek.  And yet further claims — ask o1 pro to explain it to you! 5. Are there national security risks to a […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Crypto regulation is likely to change very rapidly. I expect that SAB 121 will be overturned, perhaps even today. Overturning SAB 121 wouldn’t even be controversial because, as I wrote earlier, Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate both voted to overturn SAB 121 which was saved only by Biden’s veto. Essentially, SAB 121 made […] The post Keep an Eye on Crypto Regulation...

That is a Bloomberg column of mine from about two weeks ago.  I thought it would make more sense to people if I did not blog it right away.  Here is one bit: Now the world knows that a very high-quality AI system can be trained for a relatively small sum of money. That could […] The post What should AI policy learn from...

I’m a long-time reader and first-time emailer. I just read your blog post from earlier this month about privatizing public services like water and electric utilities. My colleague Glen Lyons and I are developing a way to introduce more competition into the electricity sector, which some believe to be hopelessly uncompetitive. The idea is to allow new, […] The post Travis Fisher on electricity privatization (from...

I was democracy-pilled by reading biographies of Franco and Salazar. The Iberian countries in the 1930’s were what every right-wing authoritarian fantasizes about: vigorous young conservative dictators firmly in charge of a country, liberals totally defeated and out of power. Both were able to stay in power for decades. The result? For a while they […] The post The case for democracy (from the...

1. Is Vietnam following some aspects of Milei? 2. Piketty and Sandel on what went wrong for the Left (NYT). 3. The wisdom of Ross Douthat: “A key paragraph in an @arisroussinos piece on Keir Starmer’s fading worldview, with applications to Canada among other nations; the attempted de-nationalization of 2nd-tier powers by their own elites actually leaves […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

DeepSeek-R1 is here.  Try it — it is amazing, free and open source.  Go to the main site and press “DeepThink” for superior performance.  Marginal cost remains difficult to measure, but almost certainly far cheaper than the main models.  A big day, most of all for Africa.  Some commentary.  Here is the research paper.  Here […] The post DeepThink from DeepSeek appeared first on...

The conversation between Henry Oliver and Hollis Robbins about Atlas Shrugged as a novel is excellent. I enjoyed especially the discussion of some of the minor characters and the meaning of their story arcs. Hollis: There are some really wonderful minor characters. One of them is Cherryl Taggart, this shop girl that evil Jim Taggart meets one […] The post Atlas Shrugged as Novel appeared first...

I said that to Ezra Klein about the current rightward vibes shift.  What are some of the scenarios I had in mind?: 1. If the Republicans regulate social media companies to discriminate less against “the Right,” those regulations may someday be used against them. 2. Personal presidential issuance of crypto assets is not always (ever?) […] The post “Be careful what you wish for,...

1. “AIs exceed humans on every major creativity test we give them, like the Torrence Test, but it isn’t clear what exactly that means.”  And in Turing tests, GPT-4 is judged more human than the humans. 2. Inference Magazine, a new magazine about AI progress. 3. Determinism continues to look more plausible. 4. NYT interviews […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

In July of 2024, Tyler Cowen, the economist and cultural commentator, wrote a blog post that proved to be among the election’s most prescient. It was titled “The change in vibes — why did they happen?” Cowen’s argument was that mass culture was moving in a Trumpian direction. Among the tributaries flowing into the general shift: the […] The post Ezra Klein on the vibe shift...

The results of the randomized evaluation, soon to be published, reveal overwhelmingly positive effects on learning outcomes. After the six-week intervention between June and July 2024, students took a pen-and-paper test to assess their performance in three key areas: English language—the primary focus of the pilot—AI knowledge, and digital skills. Students who were randomly assigned […] The post More on the AI virtual tutor...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: Another reason to write for the LLMs is to convince them that you are important. Admittedly this is conjecture, but it might make them more likely to convey your ideas in the future. Think of how this works with humans. If you […] The post Should you be writing for the...

Here is some video. The post The second attempted coup d’etat was partially successful appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsFor the past four years the US government was, well, self ... by DismalistThis is misleading. Biden did not pause the exports, he paused ... by Newt EcherHi this is Tyler Cowen, I am pleased to announce that Naveen ... by Tyler CowenRelated StoriesThinking...

1. Is it bureaucratically hard to give away the Chagos Islands? 2. New Bloomberg results on NYC congestion. 3. George Eliot and tech. 4. Samuel Butler’s Erewhon: “The writer went on to say that he anticipated a time when it would be possible, by examining a single hair with a powerful microscope, to know whether […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

A new paper in the QJE, The Global Race for Talent: Brain Drain, Knowledge Transfer, and Growth, by Marta Prato uses extensive data on inventors and their migration to make the following points. (i) gross migration is asymmetric, with brain drain (net emigration) from the EU to the United States; (ii) migrants increase their patenting […] The post A Galt’s Gulch for Talent appeared...

I really enjoyed your piece on USPS privatization. I recently wrote about the subject too. Even in the absence of privatization, relaxing the mail monopoly and allowing competition would make for better, more reliable mail services. This is true even in countries with a “national champion”-style carrier subject to a universal service obligation. It appears that, over […] The post Ross Marchand on postal service privatization...

Timur Kuran is right, they have no business doing this.  Furthermore the quality of the work is not befitting an AEA journal.  Demonstrated preference is not stressed, for instance that even survey respondents are about 10x more likely to be reading Twitter than BlueSky.  Maybe it is all a network effect and they would prefer […] The post The AEA is making social media...

In your recent conversation with Misha Saul, you and Misha discussed your joint dislike for Leviticus. I can’t say that I find Leviticus a page-turner, but the book that’s done the most to help me understand why it’s important and what role it plays in the movement of the narrative is L Michael Morales’s book Who […] The post Corin Wagen defends Leviticus (from my...

1. The sad beige aesthetic. 2. More on AI boyfriends and girlfriends (NYT). 3. “…free dog-sitting services now offered at major cultural landmarks, including Rome’s MAXXI Museum and Florence’s Uffizi, art lovers no longer have to choose between culture and their canine companions.” TNSSJ. 4. “New randomized, controlled trial of students using GPT-4 as a tutor […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

Do minimum wage changes affect workplace health and safety? Using the universe of workers’ compensation claims in California over 2000-2019, we estimate whether minimum wage shocks affect the rate of workplace injuries. Our identification exploits both geographic variation in state-and city-level minimum wages and local occupation-level variation in exposure to minimum wage changes. We find […] The post Gordon Tullock was right appeared first...

I wrote this paper several years ago when preparing for my CWT with Emily Wilson.  It is now being published by Liberty Fund, in parts.  Here is part I.  Here is an excerpt from the introduction: In this series, I will use an economic approach to better understand the implicit politics and economics in The Odyssey. […] The post An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey:...

That is the topic of a recent Bloomberg column.  Here is the opening bit: One of the longest, most technical and, as it turns out, most inconsequential public-policy debates of the 21st century was about net neutrality. Now that a federal appeals court has effectively ended the debate by striking down the FCC’s net neutrality rules, it’s worth asking what […] The post Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye...