April 28, 2025
A World with Smart AI but Not Human-Level AI
How long, if ever, before we achieve artificial intelligence that can pretty much do everything that a human worker can do currently? My short-hand way of gauging the speculative timeline relies, at least partially, on prediction markets. And the most recent message from them suggests tempering expectations, at least a bit. For example: The current…
April 23, 2025
What Would a US Tariff on Chips Look Like?
The US government will be “taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN”, President Donald Trump recently declared. Given his repeated promises to impose a tariff on imported chips, we must assume some action is coming. But what type, and to what end? According to trade data, the US imports around $30bn…
April 21, 2025
Silicon Valley’s Consumer Eugenics
The orchid was once an expensive, highly cultivated symbol of refinement; now, cheaper cultivars can be found in almost any grocery store. Perhaps that makes it a fitting image for a new fertility company, Orchid Health, that seeks to encourage parents to breed better children. Orchid Health is one of several Silicon Valley start-ups that…
April 21, 2025
The Nuclear Race to Power the AI Economy
America’s nuclear paradox: Yesterday’s reactors are being resurrected to power the future. For example: At Palisades, Michigan, engineers rush to repair steam generators before an October 2025 restart, while at Three Mile Island—where a 1979 meltdown once buried the country’s postwar nuclear ambitions—Microsoft has committed billions for carbon-free electricity to feed its voracious artificial-intelligence operations….
April 15, 2025
Making DOGE Constitutional
The “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has been hard to pin down. In the wake of last year’s election, Elon Musk and his erstwhile partner, Vivek Ramaswamy, gestured toward some of the effort’s contradictory impulses in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees,” they insisted. But “unlike government…
April 14, 2025
The Strange New Politics of Science
Amid the familiar lines of political division in America—immigration, abortion, taxes, regulation, and the like—a new divide has emerged over trust in science. Concerns about the politicization of science and the “scientization” of politics can be traced back decades. But more recent trends indicate that we are entering a new era in the politics of science,…
April 9, 2025
The Perversity and Unconstitutionality of Climate Superfund Laws: When Political Myopia Reigns Supreme
Money grabs by politicians and ideological interest groups are nothing new, but the spate of recent proposals for climate “Superfund” laws — attempting to blame and tax the fossil energy producers for many billions of dollars for the purported adverse effects of anthropogenic (caused by emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG)) climate change — truly are in a…
April 9, 2025
Measuring and Building Human Leadership in an AI World
A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Measuring Human Leadership Skills With AI Agents, presents evidence that artificial intelligence may soon play a central role in evaluating human soft skills—long considered too complex and subjective to measure objectively. Conducted by Ben Weidmann and David Deming et al. at the Harvard Kennedy School,…
April 8, 2025
Does Testosterone Make Men?
Does biology determine destiny, or is society the dominant cause of masculine and feminine traits? In this spirited exchange, the psychologist Cordelia Fine and the evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven unpack the complex relationship between testosterone and human behaviour. Fine emphasises variability, flexibility and context – seeing gender as shaped by social forces as much as…
April 4, 2025
Why Trump’s FTC Firings Matter—Even If They’re Legal
President Donald Trump fired two Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last Tuesday, a move that raises important questions about the independence of regulatory agencies. If challenged in court—something the commissioners say they will do—the outcome could set a major precedent regarding presidential authority over supposedly independent agencies. Legally, this issue is murky….