~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (560)

I have now read through the very impressive paper on AI tasks to have come out of Anthropic, with Kunal Handa as the lead author, including Dario, Jack, and quite a few others as well.  Here is the paper and part of the abstract: We leverage a recent privacy-preserving system [Tamkin et al., 2024] to […] The post Which economic tasks are performed with...

Akhil Kumar, 19, Toronto, global health issues and general career development. Janet Shin, Berkeley, neurotech and brain imaging. Diana Leung, San Francisco, AI and bio and machine learning. Kyle MacLeod, Oxford University, economics videos on YouTube. Aarav Sharma, Singapore, high school, to work on exoskeletons and AI. Megan Gafford, NYC, writings on aesthetics, Substack. Alice […] The post Emergent Ventures winners, 40th cohort appeared...

1. Dwarkesh and Toby Ord on inference and AI governance. 2. Gwern on Greenland. 3. Bill Gates and Patrick Collison in conversation. 4. George Selgin is retiring. 5. Was there a Soviet DOGE under Gorbachev? 6. New results on clouds and global warming? The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Tamerlane. It didn't take long for this...

The IMF estimates that Europe’s internal barriers are equivalent to a tariff of 45 per cent for manufacturing and 110 per cent for services. These effectively shrink the market in which European companies operate: trade across EU countries is less than half the level of trade across US states. And as activity shifts more towards […] The post European Union fact of the day...

That is my recent Bloomberg column on this all-important topic.  Here is one part: The risk is that Trump would hoard the most sensitive information and disclose selectively, to manipulate the news cycle or to distract attention from other events. It also could give him more political weapons to use against what he calls the […] The post How should government disclosure be done?...

Human capital—encompassing cognitive skills and personality traits—is critical for labor market success, yet the personality component remains difficult to measure at scale. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and comprehensive LinkedIn microdata, we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate that this novel “Photo Big 5” predicts school […] The post AI Personality Extraction from Faces: Labor...

In the previous post, I cited data showing that Ukrainian bond prices had fallen over the last few months.  But it seems that data source was faulty, and the value of Ukrainian bonds has been rising, including recently.  You can find some sources here.  Apologies for the error! I thank JoshB. for drawing this to […] The post Ukrainian bond data correction appeared first...

Right now in the neighborhood of 46%.  Right before the election they were roughly at 34%.  That is for the one-year bond. The post Ukraine bond yields appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Reason. Yup. This is a weird instance where the ... by Lord ActionIn reply to Donald Pretari. Hey dumbass, they weren’t ... by Shower of SmegmaIn reply to...

1. New blood test for pancreatic cancer. 2. More on IRBs and the law. 3. Freedom Cities for America: the White Paper. 4. Nina Jankowicz corrects the record on US AID funding of her. 5. DOGE website is live. 6. Social Stockfish. 7. Free Exchange at The Economist covers Deep Research. 8. Google sheet from […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

Charles Mann is worried that so few of us have any notion of the giant, interconnected systems that keep us alive and thriving. His new series, How the System Works at the The New Atlantis, is a primer to civilization. As you might expect from Mann, it’s beautifully written with arresting facts and images: The great […] The post How the System Works appeared first...

I have been reading the new Liz Pelly book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.  It is a very intelligent and well done book, though it is more pessimistic than I am about the future of music. One central lesson of the book is just how many “passive” […] The post Passive listeners on Spotify appeared first...

I have a very concrete and specific proposal for teaching people how to work with AI.  It is also a proposal for how to reform higher education. Given them some topics to investigate, and have them run a variety of questions, exercises, programming, paper-writing tasks — whatever — through the second or third-best model, or […] The post How to teach people how to...

Our analysis suggests that income equality in the Nordics is primarily driven by a significant compression of hourly wages, reducing the returns to labor market skills and education. This appears to be achieved through a wage bargaining system characterized by strong coordination both within and across industries. This finding contrasts with other commonly cited explanations […] The post Income inequality in the Nordics appeared...

1. Samir Varma is now on Substack. 2. “This is consistent with my (and Habermas’s) view that discursive practices are in some sense inherently left-wing.” 3. Mafia godfathers are having trouble recruiting talent (Daily Mail). 4. Sending Sora to film school. 5. What is a John Cage pilgrimage like? 6. What does a Macca pilgrimage […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Recall Principle 2 of Three Simple Principles of Trade Policy, Businesses are Consumers Too. Case in point, steel. Justin Wolfers summarizes an analysis of Trump’s 2018 steel tariffs: Going back further we have a good analysis from Lydia Cox of the Bush steel tariffs. Even though the tariffs were temporary, they led to a rearrangement […] The post Steel Tariffs in Two Pictures appeared...

This paper investigates the causal impact of place-based factors on fertility decision using mover design and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1968-2019). We find that moving to a state with a 1 percentage point higher birth rate increases the probability of childbirth by 0.9 percentage points, with cumulative effects reaching 3.8 percentage […] The post Place Effects on Fertility Decision: Evidence...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one excerpt: Stablecoins are programmable crypto assets that promise conversion into some currency, typically US dollars. Currently, they are the fastest-growing sector of crypto. Stablecoin usage is up 84% since August 2023 and is now at a peak of $224 billion. The sympathetic stance of President […] The post Will stablecoins herald a broader-based dollarization?...

1. Nvidia markets in everything? 2. Selfish Reasons to Have Kids is now available on audiobook. 3. Software development job postings, the trend. 4. Jason Furman on Bidenomics, a very good piece. 5. Hard truths, NJ edition. 6. New DOGE Executive Orders. 7. Richard Grenell the new interim executive director at the Kennedy Center. 8. […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

An excellent thread from Dilan Esper.  Excerpt: I have pointed out already that Elon Musk has massive economic interests in cases currently before the federal courts. That is reason enough he would have to obey an order or resign if Trump demanded he not do so. A federal court could default him on those suits. […] The post Why it is hard for the...

Ilya Somin covers this question over at Volokh Conspiracy.  I receive many queries about this, some of them panicky and anguished.  I haven’t covered it, mostly because I don’t feel I have enough insights into the relevant matters of constitutional law, or for that matter what is going on inside the administration (for instance, how […] The post The danger of Trump disobeying court...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  So what should I ask?  Here is his Wikipedia page.  Here is Austan on Twitter.  Here is scholar.google.com.  Note that Austan is now president of the Chicago Fed.  So what should I ask him? The post What should I ask Austan Goolsbee? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIN October on an Odd Lots (Bloomberg!)...

If you are trying to contextualize someone’s opinion on current AI, I suggest asking three basic questions about their perspective.  In particular, you should know which of the following three realities they are aware of.  Here goes: 1. How good are the best models today? Most people do not know this, even if you are […] The post The three levels of AI understanding...

Marriages in China plunged by a fifth to the lowest level on record last year, a setback to efforts by the government to reverse a demographic crisis threatening the world’s second-biggest economy. The number of marriage registrations fell to 6.1 million, according to statistics released by China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs on Saturday, after a post-pandemic increase to nearly […] The post China fact of the day appeared...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with her.  From Wikipedia: Jennifer Pahlka (born December 27, 1969) is an American businesswoman and political advisor. She is the founder and former executive director of Code for America. She served as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer from June 2013 to June 2014 and helped found the United States Digital Service. Previously she […] The post What should I ask Jennifer Pahlka?...