LLMs are statistical bullshit generators. They are trained to say what you want to hear. Not what you need to hear. Yeah, I know, there’s reasoning, tool calling, memory, and other neat tricks. Still, fundamentally, generative models are stochastic parrots.

The more I learn about Pangram, the worse it seems, and the more I have concerns about people using it to "AI shame" people. (Not directed at @jon_stewartmill here.) Especially since we know that any long-form piece that's has links and structure, etc., is overjudged on Pangram. It's just silly. Ultimately, my guess is that we will eventually judge pieces by quality of the work product as we grow accustomed to this, but adaptation to this new tool and its uses takes time.

A timely warning! I have seen many articles recently that follow the trajectory this article talks about. A consequence is that young researchers who are familiarizing themselves with the literature in their fields suffer. AI Is Ruining Scholarship chronicle.com/article/ai-is-…

Let me lay out the unpleasant arithmetic of the replacement rate, and why a modern society finds it so hard to reach. A population of 100 women in an advanced economy needs 210 children to replace itself. Why? Absent sex-selective practices, roughly 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. Evolution overshoots male births because boys are more prone to early death from accidents and disease. Therefore, of 210 children, about 108 are boys and 102 are girls. Not all girls reach the midpoint of their fertile age: accidents, suicide, homicide, and illness take some. In an advanced economy, about 98% of them survive, leaving 100 women to replace the original 100. Now consider the distribution of children per woman. Imagine 15 women have no children. Five do so by choice, for various reasons (professional, affective, religious). Ten face unfixable fertility problems, theirs or their partner’s. The 10% figure is conservative: the medical literature points to around 13%, and that does not even count male fertility problems. Of the remaining 85, 10 have one child, 60 have two, 10 have three, and 5 have four. I am stopping at four to keep the post concise; very few women in younger cohorts have five or more children, but I could adapt the example to account for them. Hence, the 100 women in this population have 180 children, for a completed fertility rate of 1.8. Interestingly, this is roughly the rate we saw in many advanced economies until the early 1990s, and in the U.S. until around 2008. But we are still 30 children short of replacement! Voluntary childlessness is only 5%. Three-quarters of women have two or more children. Look around: most of your friends will have two, plenty will have three or four. And yet, we are well below replacement. You would not look at this population and call it selfish (is having two kids hedonistic?) or accuse it of losing family values (only 5% of women are choosing voluntarily not to have children). The point is simpler. To reach 210 births, you need a substantial share of women to have three or more children. Two as the “normal” pattern will not get you there. And modern society makes three or more a costly proposition for most families. Of course, current fertility rates in most advanced economies are well below 1.8. But my point is that, under present social arrangements, we should not expect 2.1, even if (to humor last weekend’s debate) we banned smartphones and TikTok. We need many, many more families with three or four children. More pointedly, there is no self-regulating mechanism that pushes a society back to 2.1. The market-clearing analogy many economists use is flawed; scarcity feedback does not work the same way. (Another post on this another day.) And, as I often read, the claim that “nature” somehow regulates current overpopulation is just childish mumbo jumbo. So yes, the arithmetic of replacement rate is unpleasant.

AI and economics research To date, I've seen a lot more on how AI can help revolutionize economics research than I've seen how concretely AI made new research happen in economics. In my own experience, I've had Claude Code markedly increase my productivity by cutting down on coding time. But it has failed to give me a single new economic insight. (I've tried.)

While I am personally excited about the possible acceleration in scientific discovery, but this is a great take.

Pretty cool analysis of AI use on Substack by @TaylorLorenz

OpenAI should start an economics pre-doc program

Today I chatted with some pre-docs heading to the grad school market. They all agreed: quant GRE matters for admissions, verbal doesn't. So they don't try on verbal. Here's what I learned doing admissions at @UChi_Economics (2007-12): verbal scores had the most predictive power for job market paper quality. Why? Everyone had near-perfect quant scores—no variance to predict anything. Verbal scores actually differentiated candidates, and writing ability turns out to matter for research. Does anyone else share this experience? And, please keep this between us because I want to maintain our competitive advantage and I want to avoid Campbells Law!

Happy Women’s Day. She is the Queen who manages our world. #Women #gender #girls

RIP Dr Manmohan Singh - one of the finest Prime Minister that India ever had. Your contributions steered the country towards a bright future. History will be kinder to you and remember you for your vision.

🚨 Exclusive: The Karnataka government is likely to impose a fee of 1-2 percent on every transaction that takes place on aggregator platforms such as Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, Amazon, Ola, Uber, Urban Company (UC), and several others

Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on how data analysis revolutionises public policy. With Nandita Banerjee, Arushi Malhotra, Priyank Khare & Samyak Sharma explore how data-driven decision-making can create efficient policies. us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi…

Great opportunity to learn about Non-UPSC Careers in Public Policy! Date: 22 June 2024 Time: 6:30 PM Explore career paths in Policy Research, Advocacy, CSR, and more.

⭐Announcing ISPP's Full-Time Internship Programme! ⭐ At ISPP, we are constantly evolving to meet the needs of our scholars and the dynamic policy landscape. Read more: ispp.org.in/embracing-change… (1/4) @parthjshah @LuisMirandaDots @Dhruva_Mathur

Start of discussion on the new book The Last Mile by Amarjeet Sinha ⁦@ispp_edu⁩ ⁦@LuisMirandaDots⁩ ⁦@IsppPolicy⁩ ⁦@Dhruva_Mathur⁩

Exciting news! This year, we launched a new 2-month full-time internship to meet industry needs & support developing policy professionals. A huge thank you to the esteemed organizations that participated. Your support directly impacts the future of policy! (1/3)

We are honoured to announce the Cheistha Kochhar Scholarship, a tribute to Cheistha Kochhar's remarkable legacy and pivotal role in fostering the partnership between ISPP and Chicago Harris. (1/2) Read more: ispp.org.in/event/cheistha-k…