Author: Rajesh Jain

Arnold Kling: “Humans’ superpower is the ability to learn, both individually and collectively…No other species is able to create, transmit, and accumulate knowledge as much as humans do. Joseph Henrich, Kevin Laland, and other anthropologists argue persuasively that this is what makes us qualitatively different from other animals… On the economy as a learning system, I now boil that down to experimentation, evaluation, and evolution. That is, a society must run a lot of experiments—think of start-up businesses or new initiatives from incumbent firms. Those experiments must be evaluated—most new business initiatives do not work. Finally, evolution has to take place—obsolete enterprises and unsuccessful new initiatives must be shut down.”

FT: “Dall-E, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney have made what might have taken an extremely skilled illustrator or animator a week to do into something any of us can commission in a few moments. There is no doubt those jobs are at terminal risk. Architects are already using AI to handle mundane tasks from distributing parking spaces and bathrooms to arranging blocks on an urban plan.”

Business Standard: “Third-party cookies help in delivering targeted advertisements to users. A first-party cookie remains on the websites users visited. Companies use third-party cookies to send targeted ads to a user across the internet, whether the user is on their website or any other. Phasing out third-party cookies is not new: Smaller browsers such as Safari and Firefox did it a few years ago. It is significant now, as Chrome commands 60 per cent of the browser market globally. In India, it has 90 per cent of the market. Why the shift? The reason is user privacy as mandated by the Competition and Markets Authority in the United Kingdom. The phaseout’s impact on digital marketing will be unparalleled, according to industry players. Advertisers may experience changes in the effectiveness of targeted advertising campaigns. The precision of targeting may weaken, impacting the return on investment (RoI) for advertising spend. Removing third-party cookies is likely to impact the digital advertising landscape, including changes in CPMs (cost per mille or cost per thousand impressions).”

Mint: “Is there a service sector that can replicate the success of India’s IT sector but needs lower labour skills, has higher labour intensity and also forges worthy backward and forward linkages? There may be one that has remained neglected for a long time, except in a handful of Indian states: the tourism sector. India currently accounts for only just over 1% of global tourism. India’s rank on the Global Travel and Tourism Development Index in 2021 was 54th. Developing the tourism sector would need streamlining visas and entry requirements, improving transport infrastructure to enhance in-land connectivity, developing and maintaining high-quality accommodation facilities as well as efficient healthcare and safety services, boosting the food processing sector, and integrating sustainable practices, among other developments.”

Indian Express: “With nearly 1.5 million aspirants vying for roughly 1,000 seats, it’s helpful to realise that the Indian civil services examination process is a rejection process – and not a selection process. This reality doesn’t always align with popular culture’s heroic narratives of valour, discipline, persistence, and hard work. The success stories, as also depicted in 12th Fail, are mere bright spots in an otherwise blank canvas. Society must communicate and acknowledge this real picture. Failure to do so and acknowledge the reality has instilled a mindset with several problematic traits.”

Noah Smith: “We know how countries get rich because we’ve seen them do it again and again. Basically, we know what industrialization looks like. Right? And we know what the requirements for that are. We know that modern scientific discoveries are absolutely key to industrialization as well as a large accumulated amount of tacit knowledge about how to build industrial things. We can see where production comes from, where you can look at a factory, you can look at supply chains and where that stuff comes from. And, you can see that we had all those natural resources before. Maybe we couldn’t extract them, but they were in the ground, they were there. And, we can see exactly the machines and the inventions that allowed us to extract those natural resources–more of them than we could before–but most importantly, to process them into new forms of stuff. Now we can make a refrigerator, before we could not. Now we can make a microphone, before we could not. And we can see very concretely where all this wealth comes from.”

IPI: “In 1992, Colorado voters approved the TABOR Amendment to Colorado’s state constitution. TABOR is a loose acronym for “Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights.” TABOR, explains Colorado’s legislative council staff, “allows the state to retain and spend an amount based on the prior fiscal year’s actual revenue or limit, whichever was lower, grown by Colorado inflation and population growth and adjusted for any ‘voter-approved revenue changes.’” In short, TABOR is a way to limit the growth of government. Under the amendment, revenue in excess of the TABOR limit must be returned to taxpayers, though it appears the legislature has some discretion in how it distributes those funds.”

FT: “Myriad “social, economic and legal” factors condition how technology is adopted and what roles will be automated, adds Dan Lucy, HR director of think-tank Institute for Employment Studies. Although all cashiers could theoretically be replaced by self-service checkouts, retailers continue to appeal to shoppers’ desire for personal assistance, for example. That unpredictability means “more general” capabilities such as “creativity, emotional intelligence . . . and the ability to continually learn” will be important for career resilience, he adds. Nick South, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, agrees. “Employers are looking for growth flexibility. We don’t know what the role will look like in five years. Your ability to adapt [is important].””

WSJ: “Artificial intelligence is boosting or transforming the fields of medicine, science, industry, education and daily life, to name just a few areas. AI can analyze X-rays and MRIs to detect diseases in their early stages. In astronomy it can help discover new planets by analyzing telescope data. AI powers driver-assist technology in cars such as lane-keeping and automatic braking. It helps delivery companies optimize routes and architects to design buildings. Wall Street uses it to help create asset-management plans, while authorities who monitor that industry use it to detect fraud. Travel websites deploy it for  personalized recommendations for flights and hotels. And in education it can provide virtual tutoring and personalized learning. In short, it’s becoming harder to find areas of life that aren’t being touched by artificial intelligence.”

Jaspreet Bindra: “[Recently], I watched at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) the launch of a product called Rabbit R1. At the end of the 30-minute video, I paid $200 and became one of the 10,000 people who ordered it on Day Zero. It looks like a small boxy phone, with a camera (called the Rabbit Eye), but what makes it special is the interface. Instead of a grid of apps which smartphones have gotten us used to, Rabbit is an AI assistant that conveys what you want to your favourite app and makes it happen…ChatGPT and other bots, however impressive, are just the very beginning of the AI era. AI goes far beyond a technology. As Gartner says: “It is not just a technology or business trend. It is a profound shift in how humans and machines interact.” The power of natural language AI agents will reshape Big Tech, fundamentally upend computing, and change our lives the same way that PCs and smartphones did, as we go down this new Rabbit hole.” More on Rabbit R1: “why does the Rabbit R1 need to exist at all? You have a button, screen, and a camera in your smartphone today. Lyu believes his company’s biggest revolution is its Large Action Model—those aforementioned rabbits that you can use (or even train yourself) to do various things on your behalf.”

Martin Wolf: “Perhaps most important, the global financial crisis, pandemic and today’s great power tensions have transformed trust into suspicion and risk-taking into “de-risking”. No substantial global trade liberalisation has occurred in more than two decades. What could come next? Continuation of a messy status quo seems the most plausible answer. The world economy would remain relatively open by historical standards with trade growing more or less in line with world output. Some decoupling of direct links between the US and China would occur. But the attempted shift by the US (and others) towards other suppliers would leave indirect dependence on inputs imported from China. A large number of countries would continue to maintain trade with the US and its close allies, on the one hand, and China, on the other…The integrated world economy is surviving. But great power nationalist rivalry can cause huge disruption. Will this era prove to be an exception? We must work to ensure it does.”

WSJ conversation with University of Florida President Ben Sasse: “The liberal arts are also central to Mr. Sasse’s educational vision: “I think the best people to navigate a complex world are people who have a broad worldview and are well and widely read.” He wants to institute a “dual core” so that humanities majors would be required to take courses in science, technology, engineering and math and STEM majors in the humanities.”

Anna Kodé: “I’ve made a habit of “observation journaling” — recording everything my eye notices, including the people, sounds, smells, noises and screens. Sometimes I go out with the sole purpose of logging my surroundings, setting a timer for 15 minutes while sitting at a coffee shop, bar or other public accommodation. When I find myself impatiently waiting for something with nothing better to do, I start writing things down, taking note of everything there is to possibly take note of, until my food or train station or whatever it is invariably arrives. By now, I’ve filled almost an entire notebook with these perusals…We’re shoulder to shoulder with many universes; countless lives, hopes, dreams and fears as complicated as our own, all clustered in the same crowded shops, train cars and sidewalks. Why ignore all that?”

FT: “Vienna’s co-housing model offers a key to keeping families in the city…As surging rents in world capitals diminish social diversity, projects such as Austria’s Gleis 21 offer one way to ease the crisis…Vienna has several innovative affordable housing schemes aimed at different social groups. The co-housing model is popular with middle-class families who have some capital but can’t afford to buy and want to bring up their kids in the city. To make sure the property is never sold on the private market, residents of Gleis 21 do not own their flats. Instead, they own shares in the building company they formed. Their monthly “rent” is their share of the mortgage repayment. At the start, each member of the co-housing group must pay €580 per sq m as a deposit (some flats are bigger than others). If they sell, they get that money back plus a bit more depending on how long they have lived there and how much money they have put in to pay off the loan.”

John Burn-Murdoch: “Extending the same analysis to the present, a striking picture emerges: over the past 60 years the west has begun to shift away from the culture of progress, and towards one of caution, worry and risk-aversion, with economic growth slowing over the same period. The frequency of terms related to progress, improvement and the future has dropped by about 25 per cent since the 1960s, while those related to threats, risks and worries have become several times more common. That simultaneous rise in language associated with caution could well be not a coincidence but an equal and opposite force acting against growth and progress. Ruxandra Teslo, one of a growing community of progress-focused writers at the nexus of science, economics and policy, argues that the growing scepticism around technology and the rise in zero-sum thinking in modern society is one of the defining ideological challenges of our time.” [via Gulzar]

WSJ: “Think about everything that’s available through a monthly subscription these days. Your favorite streaming service. Also, three more streaming services. This newspaper! Cable TV. Music. Audiobooks. Makeup. Salads. Razors. Substacks. Toothbrushes. Your dinner. Your dog’s dinner. The number of subscriptions you have to manage is enough to make your head spin, at which point you could use a subscription to help you meditate. But paying for the subscriptions you use is not the only reason your bill is probably much higher than you realize. It’s also because you’re overpaying for the ones you don’t use. That, as it turns out, is one of the hidden forces behind the subscription economy: Americans spend billions of dollars on stuff they have forgotten about. A dirty little secret behind many of the world’s most popular subscription services is that they owe part of their success to our lack of attention.”

Sharon Brous: “We cannot magically fix one another’s broken hearts. But we can find each other in our most vulnerable moments and wrap each other up in a circle of care. We can humbly promise each other: I can’t take your pain away, but I can promise you won’t have to hold it alone. Showing up for one another doesn’t require heroic gestures. It means training ourselves to approach, even when our instinct tells us to withdraw. It means picking up the phone and calling our friend or colleague who is suffering. It means going to the funeral and to the house of mourning. It also means going to the wedding and to the birthday dinner. Reach out in your strength, step forward in your vulnerability. Err on the side of presence. Small, tender gestures remind us that we are not helpless, even in the face of grave human suffering. We maintain the ability, even in the dark of night, to find our way to one another.”

Mint: “The art of taking an afternoon nap is not that simple…There are several aspects to keep in mind. For instance, ensure that you are taking a break in a comfortable place where nobody disturbs you. Keep your phone on silent. Secondly, don’t expect too much from the snooze. A 2021 study, in the journal Science Advances, concluded that “the brain activity common to the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness (nonrapid eye movement sleep stage 1 or N1) ignites creative sparks”. Thirdly, try to not let the daily things of the day crowd your mind. Twenty minutes is a good nap duration to heighten efficiency without entering deep sleep stage, says Dr. Shobha. And try to do it in the afternoon. Post lunch, there will be increased blood supply to the digestive system and reduced blood flow to other parts of the body, including the brain which leads to somnolence. This is linked to one’s circadian rhythm, the body’s internal clock that follows a 24-hour cycle. Within this cycle are two peaks, one at night, and the second, early afternoon.”

David Brooks writes about the growth of government bureaucracies: “The result is the soft despotism that Tocqueville warned us about centuries ago, a power that “is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild.” In his Liberties essay, Edmundson writes that this kind of power is now centerless. Presidents and executives don’t run companies, universities or nations. Power is now held by everyone who issues work surveys and annual reports, the people who create H.R. trainings and collect data. He concludes: “They are using the terms of liberation to bring more and more free people closer to mental serfdom. Some day they will awaken in a cage of their own devising, so harshly confining that even they, drunk on their own virtue, will have to notice how their lives are the lives of snails tucked in their shells.” Trumpian populism is about many things, but one of them is this: working-class people rebelling against administrators. It is about people who want to lead lives of freedom, creativity and vitality, who find themselves working at jobs, sending their kids to schools and visiting hospitals, where they confront “an immense and tutelary power” (Tocqueville’s words) that is out to diminish them.”

FT: “Barcelona’s digital twin project will harness the power of the city’s supercomputer. Its latest version, MareNostrum 5, unveiled in December, has the ability to perform 314 million billion calculations per second. It lives within the deconsecrated Torre Girona chapel, on the campus of the Barcelona Polytechnic. Where once one might have prayed to God for an answer, now one goes to a computer. In recent years, digital city-building has become a legitimate part of urban planning. Barcelona, Cambridge and Helsinki are among a number of European cities exploring how copies of themselves could prove useful in making their built environments sharper, faster, cleaner and greener. What exists in real life is being rendered a second time in the digital space: creating a library of the past, an eagle’s-eye view of the present and, potentially, a vision of the future.”

Kirsten Green: “I’ve changed my mind about what a successful person looks like. My v1 framework for a successful person focused on external achievements. Is this person leading a company? Are they operating at the top of their field? Are they leading movements and creating change? Those were the questions that decided whether someone was a success or not. It created a picture of someone well-educated, well-read, and well-traveled, with an aspirational lifestyle.  Though this is a common view of success, I’ve come to appreciate how myopic it is. Today, success looks very different to me. For my v2 definition of success, I think about things like: Do you have a genuine sense of self and purpose? Do you have an openness to evolve? Can you be at peace alone in a quiet room? It’s a broader definition but also a higher bar. I don’t want to judge, but I think it can be tougher to be at peace with yourself than to be hard-charging and get a promotion. One of the things I like about the v2 definition is that in this framework, it’s never too late to be successful. It’s not dependent on finding the right career and rising through the ranks in your 30s. This is much more personally driven.”

Tyler Cowen: “Imagine a chatbot programmed to be your child’s friend. It would be exactly the kind of friend your kid wants, even (you hope) the kind of friend your kid needs. Your child might talk with this chatbot for hours each day. Over time, these chatbots would indeed teach children valuable things, including about math and science. But it would happen slowly, subtly. When I was in high school, I had two close (human) friends with whom I often talked economics. We learned a lot from each other, but we were friends first and foremost, and the conversations grew out of that. As it turns out, all three of us ended up becoming professional economists. This could be the path the most popular and effective AI chatbots follow: the “friendship first” model. Under that scenario, an AI chatbot doesn’t have to be more fun than spending time with friends, because it is itself a kind of friend. Through a kind of osmosis, the child could grow interested in some topics raised by the AI chatbot, and the chatbot could feed the child more information and inspiration in those areas. But friendship would still come first.”

FT: “Think of a city you know, and try to picture it five years from now. Will its streets be full of electric cars, some of them self-driving? If so, then the current travails of electric vehicles (EVs) will have been a mere speed bump. US sales have slowed well below the government’s target, EVs’ share of the British market has stopped growing and only 1.2 per cent of European passenger cars in 2022 were battery-powered. We know that some vehicle is going to replace the combustion-engine car. The EU, UK, California and several other US states will ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035, with the phasing out starting much earlier. So what will most drivers shift to? Will they take up electric cars — in effect, just a cleaner version of what they already had — or switch modes of transport altogether? My bet is that, in cities at least, the e-car won’t be the vehicle of the future. I suspect it will keep falling further behind e-bikes, e-mopeds and e-scooters.”