Author: Rajesh Jain

WSJ: “AI-driven large language models trained on massive amounts of voice, text and video conversations are now smart enough to detect and mimic emotions like empathy—at times, better than humans, some argue. Powerful new capabilities promise to improve interactions in customer service, human resources, mental health and other fields, tech experts say. They’re also raising moral and ethical questions about whether machines, which lack remorse and a sense of responsibility, should be allowed to interpret and evaluate human emotions…The benefits of the new technology could be transformative, company officials say. In customer service, bots trained to provide thoughtful suggestions could elevate consumer interactions instantly, boosting sales and customer satisfaction, proponents say. Therapist bots could help alleviate the severe shortage of mental health professionals and assist patients with no other access to care.”

NYTimes on prediction markets: “The basic idea behind Manifold Markets and similar platforms, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, goes like this: Markets aggregate information. The more information they aggregate, the more accurate they tend to be. And if enough people make enough bets, with enough information behind them, markets can tell you something useful about the future…In the Rationalists’ view, prediction markets are an essential part of a healthy civic ecosystem, and a necessary check on experts and mainstream authorities. They believe that prediction markets work because they harness the wisdom of crowds, and filter out noise and bias by reducing contentious debates to simple yes-or-no questions. Good forecasters win more bets over time, while bad ones lose money and influence. And everyone learns by watching prices move in real time, as more information is added to the market.”

Adam Mastroianni: “How do you make sense of a world where the scientific sands are always shifting and where so much remains unknown? It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve made my peace with it by learning to hold everything loosely, to remain ever humble about what we do know and ever optimistic about what we will…What sustains me now is neither certainty nor hopelessness, but a determined, humble optimism. The right answers are often simply unknown, and I might die without getting to know the truth. And yet the truth will be known one day. Just as we solved many of the mysteries that befuddled our ancestors, our descendants will solve many of the mysteries that befuddle us. Our ignorance is profound, forgivable and temporary. There are only two true errors: One is believing that we have no errors left to make, and the other is believing that those errors are permanent and irreversible.”

FT: “For Bonnie Quinn, a cash payment of £25 a week has proved to be a lifeline during the UK’s cost of living crisis. A single mother from Polbeth, south west of Edinburgh, the Scottish child payment has enabled her to afford packed lunches for her son, who rejects school meals because of his autism, and travel to her job as a catering assistant. “[It] has really helped just for me to be able to get to work and make sure that my little boy had everything when I was at work,” Quinn said of the government assistance she has received since 2021. “It has definitely been a lifesaver.” Supporters of the programme say the money is reducing deprivation among Scottish children to levels below the rest of the UK. They also say the initiative could act as a model for cash disbursements in combating poverty globally.”

Shankkar Aiyar: “Characteristically, young India views a government job via quota as the way out of the rut of doles and poverty. The aspiration is challenged by a curious Indian paradox—the coexistence of joblessness and vacant government posts—perpetuated by political apathy. It is estimated that there are over 2 million posts vacant across central and state governments. This July, the government informed Rajya Sabha that there are 9.64 lakh posts vacant across departments in the central government. Add to this over 12 lakh teacher posts—there are 117,285 single-teacher schools across India—and those of healthcare workers and police personnel left vacant across states. It is true that addressing asymmetries of opportunity and income calls for a reconfiguration of the current paradigm of reservations. It is equally true that the exercise cannot stop at merely identifying those in need. Diagnosis alone is scarcely sufficient to heal the polity. The parties chorusing the demand for enumeration must present a credible policy prescription—for modernising agriculture, for investing in human capital, for employment generation—to propel growth and harness demographic dividend. The quest for equity must be enshrined in the altar of an ambitious plan for growth without which quotas will at best represent a post-dated promise.”

Edward Luttwak: “As far as American power abroad goes, you have identified one-half of the phenomenon; the other half is Asia. The United States is now in a confrontation with China, for which it will need allies. But the United States finds itself possessed of very good allies – seriously good allies. You have India, which has all kinds of shortcomings, but practically speaking, it is the only ally we have that ties down PLA forces. There are at least 80,000 PLA troops active on the Indian border. India was trying desperately hard to stay neutral in this conflict, but the Chinese had to kick the Indians in the face until they became our allies. So China gave us India.”

WSJ: “Hardware can’t work without software. While chip companies typically don’t produce user-facing software like the apps on PCs and smartphones, they are typically responsible for providing the software tools that enable developers to write applications that can run on their chips. On that front, Nvidia put its AI stakes in the ground very early. In 2006, the company announced Compute Unified Device Architecture, or CUDA—a programming language that allows developers to write applications for GPUs. This turned out to be a key building block for the company’s AI business. It allowed engineers and scientists to program GPUs “to solve mathematically-intensive problems that were previously cost prohibitive,” the company said in its annual regulatory filing in early 2007. Over time, CUDA has grown to encompass 250 software libraries used by AI developers. That breadth effectively makes Nvidia the go-to platform for AI developers…CUDA gives Nvidia a competitive moat that competitors will find difficult to cross.”

WSJ: “In the contest to knock China off its perch as the world’s factory floor, countries such as Mexico, India and Vietnam face a formidable rival: China’s vast interior. Low-cost manufacturing is expanding away from China’s bustling coast as companies hunt for cheaper land and labor in central and western provinces. The migration has accelerated in recent years as U.S. tariffs push up costs for factories, and China’s coastal megacities focus on high-tech electronics, electric vehicles and other advanced industries. The result has been an export boom for China’s inland provinces that dwarfs the acceleration in overseas sales enjoyed by would-be rivals to China’s manufacturing crown.”

Sarah Ebner: “No real replacement [for email] has emerged. Email has not only usurped letters as the main means of communicating news — it is also a source of education and inspiration, a way to promote events and even a tool for verifying your identity. Plus, its archives live on in your inbox, remaining eminently searchable. Newsletters are just one way in which email has evolved…Email’s success lies in the seamless way it has embedded itself in every life stage: a school address is followed in quick succession by a university one, and then a professional one. In other words, email isn’t dead. It’s everywhere.”

WSJ: “The 20th century belonged to the unruly minds at 3M. From its early days, the American manufacturing giant gave its researchers a long leash to chase ideas, many to dead-ends. The hits, though, were indelible: Scotch tape. Masking tape. Videotape. Post-it Notes. N95 masks. Artificial turf. Heart medication. 3M patented adhesives and abrasives, as well as proprietary coatings and films that reflect light, repel water and insulate against cold and heat—materials at the heart of highway signs, weatherproof windows and stain-resistant clothing and carpets. Its optical film brightened the screens of millions of laptops, smartphones and flat-screen TVs. A cautious air has since settled on the 3M headquarters and research campus in Maplewood, Minn., dampening the restless ambition that built the company, according to some investors and company veterans. There are fewer new products and fewer still have been blockbusters, a dry spell that couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.”

WSJ: “As AI becomes capable of taking on more work that is now done by humans, people will need to more aggressively upgrade their skills to stay productive and employable. “Reskillers,” a new type of teacher, will help people stay one step ahead of the machines. As AI evolves, companies will put growing value on specialists who can guide such critical human development. “Teachers had it bad under the industrial revolution. Look at what they are paid,” says Stephen Messer, co-founder and chairperson of Collective[i], which has developed a foundation model that produces insights around revenue forecasting and growth. “Now, I think teachers are about to go through a revolution because of AI.” Reskillers will need to understand the talents that organizations require as technology marches ahead. “This puts an onus on employees and companies to stay relevant,” says Keith Peiris, co-founder and chief executive of Tome, a startup with a generative AI-native storytelling and presentation platform. “In the ‘old world,’ pre generative AI, maybe you needed 100 people to build a company…With AI, maybe you could build that company with 30 people.””

Ilya Somin: “The popularity of political misinformation is indeed due primarily to demand, rather than supply, which is why the problem long predates the rise of modern social media, and might well have been as bad or even worse in earlier eras dominated by what we today call the “legacy” media of newspapers and radio. The lies and disinformation that promoted fascism, communism, and other enormously harmful ideologies spread without the aid of Twitter and Facebook…This demand for misinformation is the real root of the problem. If it were lower, the supply would not be much of a danger, and at the very least would not affect many voters’ political decision-making.”

Arnold Kling: “When I finish writing a book review, I will often say to myself, “There! Now nobody has to read the book. I’ve boiled it down for them.” We would be better off if authors did that work themselves…Books and magazines evolved when printing and distribution costs were high. This meant that consumers had limited amounts of material to read, so that as a writer you could take your time getting to the point. Computers and the Internet get rid of printing and distribution costs. The most important scarce resource these days is the reader’s time. You can complain about that all you want, but I recommend adapting to it instead…Your aspiration should be to condense your thoughts into a good substack essay.”

Donald Boudreaux: “The basic rules that all good parents teach their children aren’t convoluted, dense, or esoteric. Nor are they unfamiliar. They’re unassailable and obvious, and in their simplicity provide indispensable guidance for the pursuit of success and happiness in our enormously complex world: Don’t hit other people (unless they intentionally and without provocation hit you first). Don’t take other people’s stuff. Keep your promises. Be honest. Don’t envy others’ good fortune. Don’t make excuses for your mistakes and failings.Respect other people’s peaceful habits and characteristics, even when these are unfamiliar. Work hard. Mind your own business. Might does not make right. Don’t think yourself entitled to be excused from any of these rules.”

Reason: “”The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.” This spicy little sentence is typical of the zingers littered throughout David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. The anarcho-capitalist classic turns 50 this year, and it’s worth revisiting for both its spirit and substance…The appeal of Friedman’s anarchism is not that he has the answer, but that he has dozens of them and he’s not at all bothered by the idea that none may be the perfect one. “It is fashionable,” writes Friedman, “to measure the importance of ideas by the number and violence of their adherents. That is a fashion I shall not follow. If, when you finish this book, you have come to share many of my views, you will know the most important thing about the number of libertarians—that it is larger by one than when you started reading.””

Arnold Kling: “I think that artificial intelligence is in that same chaotic, high-potential state in which the Web found itself in 1993. Yes, the field of artificial intelligence in computers has been around a long time. By the same token, as of 1993, the Internet had been around for a quarter century. But the release of NCSA Mosaic did for the Internet what the release of ChatGPT did for AI. The newest buzzword in AI is “multimodal,” meaning combining text, images, and possibly other sensory inputs as well as data. Today’s text-only chatbots may soon look as primitive as the text-only Web of 1992. Tim B. Lee’s recent essay foresees powerful results from combining AI’s with cameras: “Until recently, computers needed human help to understand what was in an image. Now computers can glean a ton of actionable information directly from images. And that data can then become an input to other software.” My advice is to set aside time to play with AI’s now. But imagine directions that the technology might take in the future. We’re in early days.”

FT: “Studies by McKinsey, the CFA Institute and others consistently show that companies that invest less in long-term growth relative to their peers end up underperforming over the medium or long haul. The bonus is largest for companies that continue to invest during difficult periods like the one we are in now. So who is to blame for this short-sighted short-termism? Corporate executives finger sellside analysts and greedy investors. The former, who dominate on earnings calls and at conferences, ask for quarterly targets for use in their models and punish those who fall short. Activist investors are accused of seeking to profit from short-term moves in a company’s share price and demanding that earnings be spent on dividends and share buybacks. While there is some truth to these complaints, corporate leaders and chief financial officers in particular also need to take a hard look in the mirror.”

AIER: “[Thomas] Sowell’s insightful angle on this is that “the more other things there are, influencing outcomes, the lower the chances of all of those things being equal.” That is critical because “At the heart of the social justice vision is the assumption that, because economic and other disparities among human beings greatly exceed any differences in their innate capacities, these disparities are evidence of proof of the effects of such human vices as exploitation and discrimination,” but “we can read reams of social justice literature without encountering a single example of the proportional representation of different groups in endeavors open to competition—in any country in the world today, or at any time over thousands of years of recorded history.” In other words, given zero real world examples where other things were equal enough that proportional representation made any sense at all as a standard from which any deviation can be judged proof of malfeasance requiring coercive redress, buttressed by mountains of evidence to the contrary (much of which Sowell cites), the central assumption or premise of much of social justice discussion is false. And that faulty core premise cannot establish the truth of the conclusions so many wish to reach…In Sowell’s words, “We might agree that “equal chances for all” would be desirable. But that in no way guarantees that we have either the knowledge or the power required to make that goal attainable, without ruinous sacrifices of other goals, ranging from freedom to survival.”

FT: “In business, bad timing can be as disastrous as a bad idea. Many will remember the first dotcom bubble. In many cases, businesses went wrong not because they did not foresee the future but because they did not understand how long it would take for that future to arrive. This was particularly true in the media. Visionary execs predicted smartphones, streaming and broadcast opportunities. And they were prescient. But what they didn’t factor in was how far off decent broadband, high-end mobiles and so on, were. So vast amounts of money was wasted. Moving too quickly was an expensive mistake. Bad timing is another way of saying that you have misread the circumstances…Moving too fast can be as catastrophic as moving in the wrong direction. It is not a forgivable frailty.”

Andy Mukherjee: “Should India double down on software services, where it has proven prowess and strong outsourcing companies? Or must it follow the successful East Asian model and bet big on factory work to generate mass employment? Maybe there is a third way…It may not lead to the 70 million new jobs the economy needs over a decade, but it could help garner much more value per employee than either assembling electronics or selling software as a remotely produced service. This third way is software products.”

strategy+business: “Change begins to scale when people are given resources to help them achieve things they already believed in. The method succeeds because it empowers people to see themselves as heroes within their own story. In the hospital example, the tally of lives saved was incentive enough. The success of the new initiatives, in turn, shifts the perceptions of those around them, opening up new possibilities, and achieving even greater impact. This approach—convincing, not coercing—can be used in all areas where companies seek to introduce new ways of working, be it new technology or simply new procedures. Though it may be tempting for managers to impose change on everyone simultaneously, a better approach is to start small and give change enthusiasts the resources they need. In the final analysis, successful transformation is about empowerment, not persuasion. By designing a resource that those who believe in change can co-opt for their own purposes, you can unlock powerful forces that enable change.”

Economist: “A radical alternative really is taking shape. Some call it “global resilience” or “economic statecraft”. We call it “homeland economics”. The crucial idea is to reduce risks to a country’s economy—those presented by the vagaries of markets, an unpredictable shock such as a pandemic, or the actions of a geopolitical opponent. Supporters say this will produce a world that is safer, fairer and greener..It will, in large part, create the opposite…Homeland economics will create billions of losers. Beneath the apparent reasonableness, there is a deep incoherence. It is based on an overly pessimistic reading of neoliberal globalisation, which in fact held great benefits for most of the world. The benefits of the new approach are at best uncertain. Meanwhile, attempts to break free economically from China are likely to be partial, at best. The benefits of green subsidies for the fight against climate change are also less clear than their proponents admit.” More: “Homeland economics will ultimately prove to be a disappointment. It misdiagnoses what has gone wrong, it overburdens the state with unmeetable responsibilities and it will botch a period of rapid social and technological change. The good news is that eventually it will bring about its own demise.”