NYTimes: “Think of agentic A.I. as a personal assistant, said Shilpa Ranganathan, the chief product officer at Expedia Group, which is developing both generative and agentic A.I. trip-planning tools. While the more familiar generative A.I. can summarize information and answer questions, agentic tools can carry out tasks. Travelers benefit by deputizing these tools to perform time-consuming chores like tracking flight prices. “Instead of manually running every search or comparison yourself, agentic A.I. can do that work in the background and come back with the most relevant options,” Ms. Ranganathan said. When comparing hotel options, for example, an agentic tool should be able to pinpoint multiple properties’ rates for your requested dates, identify whether they have availability and compile that information in one place so you can easily compare. A generative tool might simply recommend hotels that broadly fit your budget, and offer links to each website, where you can check the details.”
Martin Wolf: “What lies ahead for the world economy? A plausible answer is that it has started to splinter. This is the argument of Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics, in his thoughtful new book The Fractured Age. Fracturing, he notes, is not the same as “deglobalising”. Trade and other forms of globalisation might not shrink by much. This should be nothing like the collapse of the 1930s. But trade with rivals will shrink and trade with friends will rise. In particular, he suggests, the world will divide between a US-centred bloc and a China-centred one, with a number of unaligned countries stuck in between, trying to do their best.”
WSJ: “Robots and AI are already remaking the Chinese economy…China’s factories and ports are learning to make and export more goods faster, cheaper and with fewer workers…China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, nearly nine times as many as the U.S. and more than the rest of the world combined, according to the International Federation of Robotics. China’s stock of operational robots surpassed two million in 2024, the most of any country.”
New Yorker reviews “Capitalism: A Global History”: “[Sven] Beckert identifies “two diametrically opposed stories”: capitalism either deserves credit for the rise in living standards and longevity or stands condemned as an “insatiable demon.” His book addresses “a deep frustration that so many of the stories we tell about capitalism are incomplete and sometimes just plain wrong.” He invites readers to study capitalism “with a sense of wonder, surprise, and astonishment—not because it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but because of its world-shaping power, and because understanding it is crucial to navigating our shared future.”” Bloomberg review.
