FT: “The end of the mass-media age is nigh, with big consequences for politics…For about a century, people in developed countries bought newspapers. Perhaps they did so chiefly for sport, the weather and cartoons, but they absorbed current affairs by osmosis. Their radios and TV sets gave them hourly news. Now, the internet’s destruction of media is nearing completion. Many people who moan about “the media” hardly see media any more. In 2023, for the first time, cable and broadcast TV combined accounted for less than half of all television viewing in the US, says the media research company Nielsen. Netflix and YouTube are winning that battle. Fox News has shrivelled to a niche retirees’ broadcaster. The US has lost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005…The cliché used to be that people had moved to social media for news. Well, they have moved to social media, but increasingly not for news.”
Rohini Nilekani: “Good parliamentarians make good laws. Good laws make for a good society. Good laws when well implemented enrich a democracy with justice, equity, rights and protections. Good laws written today create a better future for countless generations ahead. Our MPs need not be distracted by local issues, for which we must hold local governments accountable. Surely we can spare 543 leaders to focus on ideas that matter more than we can immediately perceive.”
WSJ: “[Bayer CEO Bill] Anderson is throwing out the management playbook to renovate the 160-year-old German company known for inventing aspirin. Anderson’s plan will trim costs by 2 billion euros, equivalent to $2.17 billion, in conventional fashion. A yet-to-be disclosed number of managers will be cut. The plan’s grand novelty is Anderson’s worker deployment scheme: Employees from various departments will be recruited to teams that decide on projects and work together for 90 days. Then, workers regroup in different configurations for their next undertaking. The 57-year-old chief executive estimates that Bayer in coming years will operate 5,000 to 6,000 self-directed teams, a transformation that could blow up like other corporate experiments—or become a business landmark. At this point, Anderson said, “We don’t have to be that good to beat the current system.””
Arnold Kling: “Naive realism concerning social problems is equivalent to what Thomas Sowell calls the unconstrained vision. Those of us who see social problems as complex have what Sowell calls the constrained vision, in which “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Moreover, even the trade-offs are not precisely spelled out for us. On the other hand, for people with the unconstrained vision, social problems have clear solutions, which are blocked by evil people. The unconstrained vision is just wrong. Social problems really are complex. Why do some people have the unconstrained vision? One possibility is that this is the way the world presents itself to them.”
Barron’s: “Chatbots look to be one of the more popular use cases for generative AI, and are driving top-line growth. Victoria’s Secret, Rent the Runway, Shopify, and Walmart have also rolled out versions of AI-powered search. Walmart executives say the company’s AI search bar is driving an “increasingly significant” number of searches on its app. In the next few years, AI search chatbots may replace the search function altogether, says Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail at Salesforce. While revenue will get a boost from AI, the bigger gains could come in profits, as retailers start integrating generative AI into more labor-intensive procedures such as marketing and customer service. Ralph Lauren, for instance, is using generative AI to write marketing emails and website product descriptions.”
