Diane Coyle: “The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies…is a fascinating book. The subtitle indicates its scope: “Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions and How the World Lost Its Mind”. The book asks why mistakes and crises never seem to be anybody’s fault – it’s always ‘the system’. Davies uses the concept of the ‘accountability sink’ – a policy or set of rules that prevent individuals from making or changing decisions and thus being accountable for them. He writes: “For an accountability sink to function, it has to break a link; it has to stop feedback from the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system. The decision has to be fully determined by the policy, which means that it cannot be affected by any information that wasn’t anticipated.” I predict that the more machine learning automates decisions, the more accountability sinks we will experience.”
FT: “A number of AI breakthroughs over the past 18 months, including the launch of video generation tools and more capable chatbots, have pushed the frontier of AI forward faster than expected. Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind, predicted earlier this year that AGI could be achieved by 2030. The pace of development has been slowed by a bottleneck in the supply of microchips, particularly those produced by Nvidia, which are essential for training and running AI models. Those constraints were easing, Musk said, but new models are now testing other data centre equipment and the electricity grid. “Last year it was chip constrained . . . people could not get enough Nvidia chips. This year it’s transitioning to a voltage transformer supply. In a year or two [the constraint is] just electricity supply,” he said.” Arm CEO Rene Haas: “Without greater efficiency, “by the end of the decade, AI data centers could consume as much as 20% to 25% of U.S. power requirements. Today that’s probably 4% or less,” he said. “That’s hardly very sustainable, to be honest with you.””
NYTimes: “Exercise offers short-term boosts in cognition. Studies show that immediately after a bout of physical activity, people perform better on tests of working memory and other executive functions. This may be in part because movement increases the release of neurotransmitters in the brain, most notably epinephrine and norepinephrine. “These kinds of molecules are needed for paying attention to information,” said Marc Roig, an associate professor in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy at McGill University. Attention is essential for working memory and executive functioning, he added. The neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin are also released with exercise, which is thought to be a main reason people often feel so good after going for a run or a long bike ride.The brain benefits really start to emerge, though, when we work out consistently over time.”
Erdil and Besiroglu: “We examine whether substantial AI automation could accelerate global economic growth by about an order of magnitude, akin to the economic growth effects of the Industrial Revolution. We identify three primary drivers for such growth: 1) the scalability of an AI labor force restoring a regime of increasing returns to scale, 2) the rapid expansion of an AI labor force, and 3) a massive increase in output from rapid automation occurring over a brief period of time. Against this backdrop, we evaluate nine counterarguments, including regulatory hurdles, production bottlenecks, alignment issues, and the pace of automation. We tentatively assess these arguments, finding most are unlikely deciders. We conclude that explosive growth seems plausible with AI capable of broadly substituting for human labor, but high confidence in this claim seems currently unwarranted. Key questions remain about the intensity of regulatory responses to AI, physical bottlenecks in production, the economic value of superhuman abilities, and the rate at which AI automation could occur.”
Andy Kessler: “Trump could seek a legacy as the leader who constrained the executive branch…Mr. Trump can lead the dismantling of our post-Franklin D. Roosevelt kinglike presidential platform. It would almost be Washingtonian, the man who refused to be named king. It would certainly be anti-Biden. Limited government lets the private sector flourish. Mr. Trump can work with Congress to implement “Six Freedoms,” reminiscent of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights from his final State of the Union address, but doable with limited government rather than a bossy president. Freedom from harm—strong defense and law enforcement. Free trade—don’t force the sale of TikTok to cronies, but instead ban it in the U.S. until Beijing allows Facebook, Google and X to operate freely in China. Free markets—let them do the hard work (ask Larry Kudlow, Mr. Trump’s former top economic adviser, who’ll explain that markets encourage success and penalize failure without the heavy hand of government). Free ideas—expression free from DEI and ESG diktats. Free opportunity—no discrimination, period. And finally, freedom from parasites—the administrative state.”
