Our experiments suggest that small AI models may be months away from being capable enough to self-replicate on commercial IoT devices, like smart ovens and off-brand Android TV boxes. A replicator ...

Twenty-five years ago Tyler told me he thought Robert Hall should win the Nobel. He has been a contender for so long today’s award was a surprise! Hall has an unusual number of unexpectedly creative ...

Assorted things I’ve been mulling over regarding agents in the economy: • Companies are in some sense the original superintelligence. It’s often the case that they can use their amortized cognitive ...

Global call center headcount is 5.3% below its December 2023 peak, ending more than a decade of growth. It has fallen year over year for eight straight quarters, a decline that started in high-income ...

Long-run U.S. population movements have been driven more by natural amenities than by jobs, and California, rich in both uniform and complementary climates, should be a persistent net gainer of ...

Dumouchel, and Zebang Xu: We propose a tractable model in which risk, at both the micro and macro levels, is endogenous and driven by incentives. In the model, each firm chooses the mean and the ...

So Cowen isn’t well described as either “positive” or “negative.” A much better description is: High appreciation + high concern + very low emotional agitation. He seems to think there is an ...

With math essentially being delegated to OpenAI, here’s what I predict for economics and the social sciences more generally: The top tier of research will just become better and it will be normal ...