Arnold Kling: “At any moment, there are two possible states of the world concerning a nation’s government debt. In the high-confidence state, investors are sure that the government will put its finances in order, and the interest rate is low. In the low-confidence state, investors do not have confidence, the interest rate is high, and this produces an immediate crisis. Either state is self-reinforcing, and the move from the high-confidence state to the crisis state can be sudden.”
Andy Kessler: “Large language models are impressive, but they are still statistical models mimicking human thinking. You can’t just throw cheaper chips at the problem and expect growth. More than Moore’s Law (chips doubling in density every 18 months) is in play. I hate to be the one to throw it, but here’s some cold water on the AI hype cycle…I’m convinced AI will transform our lives for the better, but it isn’t a straight line up.”
Demis Hassabis: ” I hope we look back in 10 years and AlphaFold will have heralded a new golden era of scientific discovery in all these different domains. I hope that we will be adding to that body of work. I think we’re quite unique as one of the big labs in the world that actually doesn’t just talk about using it for science, but is doing it.”
Akash Prakash: “[India’s] IPO markets are wide open, with over 250 listings in the last three years. India is probably the best place to list for a startup today. Most startups are quickly flipping back to an Indian incorporation to enable them to list in our markets. With the flow of retail money into funds and also the continued success of active management, there is enough demand for new listings. However, we must ensure that the pricing of new VC-backed listings is reasonable enough for investors to make money; otherwise, they may choose to stay away. The VC stalwarts also need to keep the pressure on founders to list, ensuring that the liquidity needs of founders and employees cannot be fully met through secondaries. Boards must also ensure that founders understand that in most cases the end goal is a public listing. Remaining private forever is not an option!”
Foreign Affairs: “Today’s wars and the assiduous investments made by the United States and China show that mass is making a comeback, but not at the expense of precision. Indeed, the current age of warfare is collapsing the binary between mass and precision, scale and sophistication. Call it the age of “precise mass.” Militaries find themselves in a new era in which more and more actors can muster uncrewed systems and missiles and gain access to inexpensive satellites and cutting-edge commercially available technology. With these tools, they can more easily conduct surveillance and stage accurate and devastating attacks. Its imperatives already shape warfare in Ukraine and the Middle East, influence dynamics in the Taiwan Strait, and inform planning and procurement in the Pentagon. In the era of precise mass, war will be defined in large part by the deployment of huge numbers of uncrewed systems, whether fully autonomous and powered by artificial intelligence or remote-controlled, from outer space to under the sea. The U.S. military has positioned itself to lead in adapting to these changes in the character of warfare, but it must be ready to adopt innovations quickly and at scale. The pioneering breakthroughs evident in today’s conflicts merely foreshadow how wars will be waged in the years and decades to come as militaries grapple with the imperatives of both mass and precision.”
