Dwarkesh Patel: “When should we expect AGI? If we can keep scaling LLMs++ (and get better and more general performance as a result), then there’s reason to expect powerful AIs by 2040 (or much sooner) which can automate most cognitive labor and speed up further AI progress. However, if scaling doesn’t work, then the path to AGI seems much longer and more intractable.”
Philip Coggan: “In most Hollywood horror movies, the monster is incredibly hard to kill. Not until the final moments of the film will it be dispatched and, even then, enough doubt will be created to leave room for a sequel. So it has been with the great speculative era on the financial markets. A pandemic, a Russo-Ukraine war and even substantially higher interest rates have not finished off the risk-taking bonanza. Take the technology sector as a starter. Much of its value lies in the future profits companies are expected to earn because of their superior growth potential. When bond yields rise as they have this year, investors should in theory use a higher rate to discount those future profits taking into account the time stocks have to be held to receive them. That means valuations should fall, not rise. But the price/earnings ratio of the US technology sector is well above its three-year average and the sector’s shares have jumped more than 50 per cent so far [in 2023].”
Rama Bijapurkar: “We teach MBA students the brand laddering framework of “attributes laddering into consequences laddering into values”. Lower-order brands stop at attributes or consequences. The old favourite example used to be Nirma — cleans well and economically (attribute), balances my budget and makes me a sensible housewife (consequence), is messiah of the masses (value). Today it is IndiGo. Gets you there efficiently/cheaply flies from even small places (attributes) — makes me more productive to earn more/now even I can fly (respective consequences) — is messiah of aspiring India (value).”
FT: “JPMorgan Chase captured almost a fifth of all US bank profits in the first nine months of 2023, capitalising on a year of turmoil for the country’s financial sector to emerge even more dominant. Its US banking subsidiary earned $38.9bn in profits — about 18 per cent of the industry’s total — according to FT calculations based on figures from industry tracker BankRegData. If the pattern continues for the full year, the lender will not have commanded such a high share of industry profits since 2009, when many banks were still recovering from the financial crisis. Its earnings for the period exceeded those of Big Four rivals Bank of America and Citigroup combined.”
