Author: Rajesh Jain

M. Suresh Babu: “[An] insight from Solow’s life and research is the value of intellectual and professional commitment to students through active mentorship. In his own words: “You only have really good ideas once in a while. I would rather teach a really bright student than write a mildly interesting paper.” According to MIT News: “When it came to teaching undergraduates, Solow would annually tear up his old lecture notes, and force himself to re-examine how he was presenting material to them. As a graduate advisor, Solow would put in long hours providing detailed feedback to students about their research papers.” Solow’s decades-long interaction with Paul Samuelson also provides an example of how important it is to engage with colleagues to improve scholarship and research. A commitment to students and teaching, as also to open-minded discussions in a collegial atmosphere, was among the fine examples he set that Indian academia must learn from.”

Technology Review: “The internet changed everything—how we work and play, how we spend time with friends and family, how we learn, how we consume, how we fall in love, and so much more. But it also brought us cyber-­bullying, revenge porn, and troll factories. It facilitated genocide, fueled mental-health crises, and made surveillance capitalism—with its addictive algorithms and predatory advertising—the dominant market force of our time. These downsides became clear only when people started using it in vast numbers and killer apps like social media arrived. Generative AI is likely to be the same. With the infrastructure in place—the base generative models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and a handful of others—people other than the ones who built it will start using and misusing it in ways its makers never dreamed of…Generative AI was trained on the internet and so has inherited many of its unsolved issues, including those related to bias, misinformation, copyright infringement, human rights abuses, and all-round economic upheaval. But we’re not going in blind. Here are six unresolved questions to bear in mind as we watch the generative-AI revolution unfold.”

Michael Munger: “ChatGPT is happening. People are rapidly learning how to use it. For many routine tasks — and, honestly, most writing is routine, not creative — it is faster and actually better to have the AI create the text, at least for the first draft. Or to have the AI create 5 or more versions of a text so that you can pick one and then edit that. Does this mean that we as a society will value writing less? Does it mean that the people — and I’d include myself, writing this right now! — who “make a living” writing are going to have to rethink our choices? Does it mean that 20 years from now we will look back, with 2020 hindsight, and say that the opposition to AI natural language applications was misplaced?  I think the answer to all these questions may be “yes.” Deal with it.”

Amartya Lahiri: “India’s jobs problem is real. With a median population age of 28, the problem will only get worse over time unless things change quickly. The country needs to combine the manufacturing and service sector models. It needs to go beyond the PLI schemes by incentivising private industry to scale up. Key for this are land and labour regulatory reforms. The good news is that these are fiscally costless though they do entail political costs. At the same time, India needs to address its skill deficit by raising its investment in higher education. India’s demographic dividend will become a demographic curse if the country fails to create relatively high value-added jobs at scale. It needs to act quickly and comprehensively.”

Economist: “The challenges facing Indian science, many of which the NRF is intended to fix, are legion. But they can be sorted into four broad buckets. The first is money. India’s overall spending on R&D is low by global standards, but the government is, surprisingly, blameless. Among other major science powers, the state rarely funds more than a quarter of a country’s overall R&D spending, with the rest made up by industry and philanthropy. In India the government accounts for nearly two-thirds. Measured in terms of purchasing power, its dollar contribution is more than twice as high as the British government’s. It is the private sector that is not pulling its weight. The low participation by private companies can be partly explained by the way government money is distributed. Nearly two-thirds of India’s R&D spending is devoted to defence, the space programme and atomic energy, areas in which the state has not traditionally collaborated with industry. Government bodies and agencies perform more than half of R&D in India, compared with 16% in China and under 10% in most other advanced economies. What money remains for academic research institutions is spread too thinly across far too many projects.”

WSJ: “To really recharge, you need at least one weeklong vacation, bracketed between two weekends, research suggests. In one study of more than 50 people who took vacations for an average two weeks, participants’ well-being levels didn’t peak until their eighth day off. A 2023 study of more than 300 vacationers found people who took between eight and 14 days off reported greater and longer positive effects once they returned to work, such as better sleep, than those who took shorter breaks. One to two weeks off, in fact, appeared to have longer-lasting benefits than lengthier vacations. After a while, “you creep back to old habits,” says Ty Ferguson, a research associate at the University of South Australia in Adelaide who co-wrote the study. His own recent getaway—several days down the coast—went bust when his three children, ages five and under, came down with a bug. Then it was time to return.”

NYTimes: “India’s economy is booming. Stock prices are through the roof, among the best performing in the world. The government’s investment in airports, bridges and roads, and clean-energy infrastructure is visible almost everywhere. India’s total output, or gross domestic product, is expected to increase 6 percent this year — faster than the United States or China. But there’s a hitch: Investment by Indian companies is not keeping pace. The money that companies put into the future of their businesses, for things like new machines and factories, is stagnant. As a fraction of India’s economy, it is shrinking. And while money is flying into India’s stock markets, long-term investment from overseas has been declining. Green and red lights are flashing at the same time. At some point soon, the government will need to reduce its extraordinary spending, which could weigh on the economy if private sector money doesn’t pick up.”

Jason Lemkin: “SaaS companies now have to be radically more efficient.  There may be limited energy to reverse many changes. Almost every SaaS company at scale is now cash-flow positive.  Big parts of marketing, support, and customer success have been cut, and may never been uncut.  SaaS companies may just now tolerate less happy customers and worse support as part of the price of being profitable.  Especially where growth is slower than before. I really can’t fully predict where all this will go. What makes sense to me is AI and technology and automation and efficiency won’t truly eliminate the role of CSM, SDR and CS.  But it may cut the number of folks doing these roles in half, and force them to do more.”

WSJ: “Sugar sneaks into our diet in surprising ways, from coffee drinks you don’t realize are sugar bombs to small amounts that add up in bread or sauces. Looking more closely at nutrition labels and little tricks like putting a few cookies onto a plate rather than eating them straight from the bag can help. It’s worth the effort, nutrition researchers say. Studies have found that diets high in added sugars are linked to a higher risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. U.S. guidelines recommend that Americans limit their consumption of added sugars to 10% of daily calories. The American Heart Association recommends a limit of 6% of calories. While overall sugar consumption has decreased in recent years, Americans still get an average of about 13% of their daily calories from added sugars, according to federal data.”

FT: “To Woolf, reading was not a passive or idle act, but one that required readers to “bend our imaginations powerfully”, an “arduous and exhausting” and yet rewarding occupation. Her advice is beautifully contradictory: read books twice, for pleasure but also for depth, she says, but remember also to “skip and saunter” through a book, rather than gritting your teeth and over-reading. What Woolf wants us to reach is “the greater intensity and truth of fiction”. I speed-read often, a hazard of the profession — but with books I love, or which strike some nerve or chord, I almost always go back over a period of days or months. I need that time for the writing to sink in, to reveal itself. My version of Li’s “daily bread” has often been The Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic, which changes meaning and continues to surprise me every decade. I promise that if you commit to a classic or a story cycle of your choice…your relationship with reading itself will change, quieten and deepen.”

Catherine Price: “The basic premise of a delight practice (which I learned about in the essay collection “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay) is simple: You make a point to notice things in your everyday life that delight you. This could be anything — a pretty flower, a smile you share with a stranger, the sight of a person playing a trumpet while riding a unicycle down a major Philadelphia thoroughfare (true story). Nothing is too small or absurd. Then whenever you notice something that delights you, you lift your arm, raise your index finger in the air and say, out loud and with enthusiasm, “Delight!” (Yes, even if you’re alone.) Ideally, you share your delights with another person…You may be amazed by how much there is to marvel at. As Mr. Gay writes, “It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.””

Jim Fan: “I’ve been asked what’s the biggest thing in 2024 other than LLMs. It’s Robotics. Period. We are ~3 years away from the ChatGPT moment for physical AI agents.”

Ajit Ranade: “Even after 30 years of Panchayati Raj legislation, and even with increased demand for governance and accountability from local bodies, they remain helplessly hobbled, either without funds and functionaries or at the mercy of their state governments. The recommendations of most state finance commissions are routinely flouted or ignored. How can a city council or a panchayat have greater say in how the local school system is run? Or how can garbage collection improve? Can a local government levy a small property tax on an airport project in its precincts? The 16th Finance Commission must find a way to carve out resources from the Consolidated Fund of India. For starters, local bodies together must have access to at least 2% of GDP annually, as against 28% kept for the Union government alone. Let this transfer be unconditional, and bypass both the Centre and state machinery.”

Economist: “By 2050 there will be a new crop of economic powers—if things go to plan. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, wants his country’s GDP per person to surpass the World Bank’s high-income threshold three years before then. Indonesia’s leaders reckon that they have until the mid-century mark, when an ageing population will start to drag on growth, to catch up with rich countries. The middle of the century is also the ultimate finale for many of Muhammad bin Salman’s “Vision 2030” reforms. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince wants to transform his country from an oil producer into a diversified economy. Other smaller countries, including Chile, Ethiopia and Malaysia, have schemes of their own. These vary widely, but all have something in common: breathtaking ambition. India’s officials think that GDP growth of 8% a year will be required to meet Mr Modi’s goal—1.5 percentage points more than the country has managed on average over the past three decades. Indonesia will need growth of 7% a year, up from an average of 4.6% over the same period. Saudi Arabia’s non-oil economy will have to grow by 9% a year, up from an average of 2.8%. Although 2023 was a good year for all three, none experienced growth at this sort of pace. Very few countries have maintained such growth for five years, let alone for 30.” More.

52 things Kent Hendricks learned in 2023. Examples: “Every iron object made before 1200 BC came from meteorites. Costco is responsible for 50% of all cashew sales in the world. One in five mammals is a bat. One-third of all socks produced globally are made in Datang, China.”

Scott Sumner: “Nationalism is not patriotism. It is a zero-sum ideology, which looks at the world through the lens of us vs. them. Nationalism embraces tribalism, protectionism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, militarism, misogyny and homophobia. In my view, it has become the number one problem facing the world today. And if not addressed, I fear that it’s about to get much worse.”

Debashis Basu: “Launched in a small way in March 2020, the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme aims to turn India into a manufacturing hub and reduce its reliance on imports, especially from China. The scheme offers incentives if incremental sales of locally manufactured products reach pre-set targets. It has had a limited success so far because imports of finished goods were replaced with imports of components with minimal assembly being done here. However, every new sector begins manufacturing with the assembly (as TV manufacturing was in the 1980s) of products, and such operations also have a ripple effect. The PLI scheme appears to be over-ambitious: We are nowhere near the six million jobs that were to be created and Rs 2 trillion given as incentives between FY21 and FY27. But I believe that Indian enterprises are more ambitious, hungry, and resourceful than they were ever before, and the scheme will boost manufacturing to some extent.”

Andy Kessler: “Every industry is about to change, which will defy skeptics. Figure out how, and then, as Mr. Wozniak suggests, get your hands dirty. As always, the pain point is cost. Look for things that get cheaper—that’s the only way to clear the smoke and get new marvels into global consumer hands. The democratization of every sector will proceed in mysterious ways. Happy hunting for opportunities.”

Anil Dash: “The first thing to understand about this new era of the internet is that power is, undoubtedly, shifting. For example, regulators are now part of the story — an ironic shift for anyone who was around in the dot com days. In the E.U., tech giants like Apple are being forced to hold their noses and embrace mandated changes like opening up their devices to allow alternate app stores to provide apps to consumers. This could be good news, increasing consumer choice and possibly enabling different business models — how about mobile games that aren’t constantly pestering gamers for in-app purchases? Back in the U.S., a shocking judgment in Epic Games’ (that’s the Fortnite folks’) lawsuit against Google leaves us with the promise that Android phones might open up in a similar way. That’s not just good news for the billions of people who own smartphones. It’s part of a sea change for the coders and designers who build the apps, sites, and games we all use. For an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems.”

Robin Quinville: “The debate over the value of humanities courses is really a question of value for money — especially when college costs so much. But it’s worth remembering the skills that humanities courses give us. First: curiosity. None of us know exactly where we are heading; we can shape the journey if we are curious about the unknown. Humanities courses teach us to be flexible and make us question our assumptions. Second: the power of example. Works of art and literature link our current concerns to those of others. They show us the frightening power of a secret shared, of misplaced trust, of leadership forged by challenges. History is a lively tale of tough decisions, of choices and their consequences. Third: communication. Google Translate may make language classes seem unnecessary. But learning another language gives you a deeper understanding of what others value. And the art of debate is a skill we all need. When I went to university, I saw my humanities courses as a foundation. It turns out they were a staircase. I could find and change careers, thrive in my choice and lead in a crisis.”

Indian Express: “In 2024, AI will become an integral part of everything from smartphones to laptops. It is already available on these devices, but with limited functionalities. You will soon see models that can run AI on-device without access to the Internet, and with the ability to give answers, take on large-scale computing, and optimise functionalities in real time. AI will also help connect the dots by personalising everything from websites to gadgets according to the specific needs of users — and modifying itself as it gets to learn more about this user. Don’t be surprised if this layer of intelligence in our devices soon becomes even more important to users than the operating systems that bring in AI capabilities. Generative AI has the power to push the boring tech into the background as it converses with users on their needs, and executes exactly what they want.”

Razib Khan: “Two years ago, journalist and entrepreneur Antonio García Martínez declared that we were entering a new “age of orality.” By this, he meant that the primacy of text was declining in our culture, as younger generations preferentially consumed audio content over magazines. Perhaps Martínez could even have stipulated that this was the age of “audiovisuality.” Anyone producing podcast content knows that the “Zoomer” generation, those born after 1995, prefer not to subscribe to a feed proactively. Instead, they spend their days passively “consuming content” by leaving YouTube in the background at length. Nearly 40% of this generation spends four or more hours a day on social media, and 88% use YouTube.” [via Arnold Kling]