Bruce Mehlman, May 10, 2023 [40 page PDF] “Over the first two decades of the 21 st Century, the U.S. (and world) grew increasingly dependent on: • China (for manufacturing, supply chains & deficit financing) • Digital (as everything digitized, networked & automated) • Easy Money (as low interest rates & QE persisted without serious… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Category Archives: Economy
2023 State of Crypto Report: Introducing the State of Crypto Index
a16zcrypto: “Emerging technologies evolve in cycles; in crypto, this includes periods of high activity, followed by so-called crypto winters. In the period marked by our now-annual State of Crypto report, it would be easy for a casual observer to overlook the rapid progress the crypto industry is making. Major infrastructure improvements like The Merge –… Continue Reading
How ChatGPT Could Lead a Four-Day Work Week
YouTube: “London School of Economics Professor and Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Christopher Pissarides joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow to discuss how the rise of generative AI could lead to a four-day work week and why he thinks the labor market could adapt quickly enough.” Continue Reading
AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Incidents and Controversies initiative
Jeremy Singer-Vine: “The AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Incidents and Controversies initiative, founded by Charlie Pownall in 2019, maintains a repository of such events, as well as related systems (e.g., GPT-4) and datasets (e.g., Labeled Faces in the Wild). The project’s spreadsheet features 1,000+ entries, each listing a title, type, year, country, sector, operator, purpose, and… Continue Reading
The Economist is reaching new audiences on TikTok
inma: “…TikTok is not merely for teenagers. About 75% of its users in Britain are aged 18 to 44, and about 60% are female. The overwhelming majority consume it as a single-screen activity: they are glued to the app for an average of around an hour per day. The Economist launched on TikTok in July… Continue Reading
CA DFPI Announces Results from Review of the Supervision and Closure of Silicon Valley Bank
“The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) today released its Review of DFPI’s Oversight and Regulation of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The report summarizes DFPI’s supervision of SVB and reviews the circumstances that led to the failure of the bank. Findings include: SVB was slow to remediate regulator-identified deficiencies; and regulators did not… Continue Reading
These are the jobs most likely to be lost and created because of AI
World Economic Forum: “Professional services company Accenture describes the arrival of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT-4 as “a significant turning point and milestone in artificial intelligence … [because] they’ve cracked the code on language complexity”. It estimates that 40% of all working hours could be impacted by large language models (LLMs) such as… Continue Reading
US public debt reached a staggering $30.93T
“Historical Debt Outstanding is a dataset that provides a summary of the U.S. government’s total outstanding debt at the end of each fiscal year from 1789 to the current year. Between 1789 and 1842, the fiscal year began in January. From January 1842 until 1977, the fiscal year began in July. From July 1977 onwards,… Continue Reading
The Fed’s Monetary Tightening and the Risk Levels of US Banks
NBER: “Between March 7, 2022, and March 6, 2023, the Federal Reserve increased the federal funds rate by nearly 4.5 percentage points. This led to a $2.2 trillion aggregate decline in the market value of long-term bank assets such as government bonds, mortgages, and corporate loans. These decreases are not fully reflected in banks’ book… Continue Reading
This company adopted AI. Here’s what happened to its human workers
NPR: “Lately, it’s felt like technological change has entered warp speed. Companies like OpenAI and Google have unveiled new Artificial Intelligence systems with incredible capabilities, making what once seemed like science fiction an everyday reality. It’s an era that is posing big, existential questions for us all, about everything from literally the future of human… Continue Reading
Yet Another Problem With Recycling: It Spews Microplastics
Wired – “Recycling was already a mess. Now a study finds that one facility may emit 3 million pounds of microplastics a year. The plastics industry has long hyped recycling, even though it is well aware that it’s been a failure. Worldwide, only 9 percent of plastic waste actually gets recycled. In the United States, the rate… Continue Reading
Bank Regulation: Preliminary Review of Agency Actions Related to March 2023 Bank Failures
Bank Regulation: Preliminary Review of Agency Actions Related to March 2023 Bank Failures. GAO-23-106736 Published: Apr 28, 2023. Publicly Released: Apr 28, 2023. “Risky business strategies along with weak liquidity and risk management contributed to the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. In both banks, rapid growth was an indicator of risk.… Continue Reading
