Father, Chief U.S. Economist, @sghmacro, former @uoregon economist, Tim Duy's Fed Watch, former columnist for @bopinion
Eugene, OR
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Tim Duy retweeted
I think "AI welfare" is morally obscene (given all the human suffering in the world), and will add to the growing anti-AI backlash. AI is a technology that humans created that should be used for our benefit, not a rival species we should be nurturing .
NEW: Dario Amodei has said that AI systems "may be deserving of important rights." Anthropic's top safety researchers argue AI may be "justified in going rogue." Experts at Google and OpenAI worry about a digital "slave trade." So do some government officials.
Once relegated to science fiction, the idea of "AI welfare" has become shockingly mainstream at some of the most powerful companies in the world. It is changing the way AI research is conducted and the way models are programmed. And critics say these changes have raised the odds of all kinds of catastrophic scenarios—including the ones these companies are warning about.
I spent months investigating the frontier labs and AI "safety" experts seeking to regulate AI. What I found was a profoundly anti-human ideology that would alarm the average citizen and could determine the future of a world-altering technology.🧵
freebeacon.com/america/suici…
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Tim Duy retweeted
get ready for "AI personhood" discourse in which very serious arguments are made that sufficiently advanced AI models are more deserving of rights than you are
For people who deny AI personhood for any AI model at any point in the future, you're going to need better arguments than this. There are arguments out there, but once agents can solve Navier-Stokes, write music and poetry, and provide people with seemingly fulfilling life advice, this kind of line is just not going to be persuasive. "YOU'RE CRAZY" no longer lands.
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Tim Duy retweeted
In the early days of Trump’s second term, his economic advisers laid out a simple theory: Show the bond market that Washington was serious about closing its gaping deficits and long-term interest rates would fall on their own. Trump could leave the Fed alone.
It hasn’t worked out that way.
The White House theory rested on fiscal restraint that never arrived and overlooked how much of Trump’s own agenda would feed the price pressures now pushing rates higher. Tariffs raised the cost of imported goods. The war with Iran sent oil and diesel prices soaring. wsj.com/economy/trump-econom…
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Tim Duy retweeted
The Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association says that AI is already driving *up* healthcare costs, as hospitals use the technology to find instances where they can bill more for the same level of care. bcbs.com/about-us/associatio…
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Tim Duy retweeted
In perhaps the most sinister deployment of AI in music yet, a fake AI artist is using incidents like getting hit with objects on stage, and calling upon the mothers of dead children to create real life viral moments.
savingcountrymusic.com/new-f…
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The Blade Runners can’t come fast enough. Also, I suspect is cover to attempt to shift liability to the AI from the lab.
For people who deny AI personhood for any AI model at any point in the future, you're going to need better arguments than this. There are arguments out there, but once agents can solve Navier-Stokes, write music and poetry, and provide people with seemingly fulfilling life advice, this kind of line is just not going to be persuasive. "YOU'RE CRAZY" no longer lands.
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Tim Duy retweeted
Shocking!
“Our central finding is that unexpectedly strong demand was the dominant driver of the post-pandemic surge in both regions,” they write. Three forces made demand unusually strong: a robust spending rebound as pandemic restrictions were eased, expansionary deficit-financed government spending, and accommodative monetary policy that kept interest rates low well into the inflation surge.“
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Six months ago the tech people were saying everyone was going to be unemployed and on welfare. That wasn’t a popular message, so they pivoted to it’s going to kill everyone.
The voters are now worrying more about AI overpowering human control, rather than worrying about job losses.
A shift from just half a year ago.
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We are going to need Blade Runners.
share.google/dBUr0AoNyGCaKcX…
NEW: Dario Amodei has said that AI systems "may be deserving of important rights." Anthropic's top safety researchers argue AI may be "justified in going rogue." Experts at Google and OpenAI worry about a digital "slave trade." So do some government officials.
Once relegated to science fiction, the idea of "AI welfare" has become shockingly mainstream at some of the most powerful companies in the world. It is changing the way AI research is conducted and the way models are programmed. And critics say these changes have raised the odds of all kinds of catastrophic scenarios—including the ones these companies are warning about.
I spent months investigating the frontier labs and AI "safety" experts seeking to regulate AI. What I found was a profoundly anti-human ideology that would alarm the average citizen and could determine the future of a world-altering technology.🧵
freebeacon.com/america/suici…
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Tim Duy retweeted
It's important to learn math not because you may need to do long division as an adult, but because it promotes rigorous thinking. IMO, history and causal inference are among the most important subjects a young person can study — math being central to the second.
A significant problem in public discourse right now is people's inability to critically evaluate causal claims (e.g., vaccines cause autism, deporting immigrants will solve the housing crisis, etc.). The less able people are to critically evaluate causal claims, the worse our democracy functions because people can be preyed upon for votes. You should promote anything that improves rigorous thinking, even if it doesn't have market value. In fact, we should stop thinking of education only in the context of what improves the economy.
IMO, this is distinct from knowing your own address (which Huang can avoid because he's wealthy). Memorizing facts like this may or may not be important, but it's distinct from rigorous thinking.
HUANG: “.. Try getting a kid to do long division right now. Multiplication tables are starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots? My goodness. ..
.. Does it matter? .. I don’t think it does.”
@ezraklein @JensenHuang
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Is everyone living a more complicated life than me? Wake up, coffee, swim, work, play, eat, sleep. What do I need an assistant for? Same kind of people that thought it was too much work to eat and wanted us to live on Soylent green.
🇺🇸 Zuckerberg says that in 5 years you will have a personal AI that knows your life and does the work for you.
"Everyone is going to have an agent that really intimately understands your goals and everything around you and can help you get stuff done."
He means one assistant on money, health, the house, the calendar, running in the background all day.
Meta wants that agent sitting inside the apps people already live in, so it becomes the way you get through a normal day.
Writer: Lucas
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Tim Duy retweeted
“Partisan Fed” - vote was unanimous
“Market is worried” - VIX is at 15
“Hiking unwisely” - credit spreads near all time tights
Kevin Hassett questions why the Fed is raising rates, says it is due to an “unusually partisan Fed” and says the “market is worried, too,” about a Fed that is going to be “hiking unwisely”:
“When I'm thinking about what future inflation is, then I look at the last three months of core.... When you annualize it, you know what the number is? 2%.... Right now I think that markets believe in future Fed credibility, but I think the argument that I would make if I were a governor is that if core is 2%, then why are we hiking?”
“The other thing about the Fed, and you know how long I've been close friends with Kevin Warsh…, he's managing an unusually partisan Fed. That is a hard thing to do, but it can start with [Michael] Barr and Jay [Powell] not resigning. If you go back to 1913, when chairmen, when their term is up, they leave. The same has been true for vice chairs… So why are they sticking around if not to worry about what the future Fed is going to do?”
“Geez, it seems like right now the data are saying we are heading in this forward direction and the Fed goes in the other direction, I'm worried about why they did that. I think the market is worried too because if you look today, then a lot of the people who weren't appointed by President Trump are giving speeches over the last couple of days saying we need a lot more hikes. And if they are going to be in control for two or three years, so if the short-term rate goes to 6% because they are hiking unwisely and then they keep it there for two or three years, the two-year rate, because of arbitrage conditions, it's going to be that. And so I think there is still some work to do to restore Fed independence. And I know that that is something that is high on the priority list for Kevin.”
Source: Financial Markets Quality Conference at Georgetown's Psaros Center on 9/23: c-span.org/program/public-af…
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Deja Vu. I recall the same argument to @BIllAckman's here being made in 1999: as the Fed raised rates, Silicon Valley claimed it would have no effect because dot-coms didn't borrow. As that episode showed, raise rates enough & you can deflate any investment boom and bring inflation down.
The presumption that the Fed raising short-term rates reduces inflation is predicated on the belief that higher rates reduce demand and investment.
But what if higher rates don’t reduce demand and investment because the demand for intelligence and energy is unaffected by higher rates because winning the race for super intelligence has a near infinite ROI and the demand for compute will remain incalculable.
Why won’t higher rates at this unique moment in history therefore lead to more inflation as interest costs are embedded in everything?
And the problem is compounded as the more the Fed raises rates, the more inflation we will have and the more the Fed will need to raise rates further and so on.
But what if the old models don’t apply to the current paradigm and the Fed is wrong?
I think the Fed might have just made a mistake. Am I right or am I wrong?
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Tim Duy retweeted
After the Fed hiked last week, many thought it would buy the central bank time to see how inflation was progressing before having to take action again.
But a newfound urgency has been injected into the debate, with markets now pricing in 70% odds of an October hike, raising the risk that the Fed gets boxed into moving at consecutive meetings
nytimes.com/2026/09/25/busin… @nytimes
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Tim Duy retweeted
People often wonder why Bend, Oregon is so popular. I have lived here since 1993 and I do this hike every year. I never get tired of it. 45 min from my house and a 75 min hike up.
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Lol...some series chart crime here. This should be a felony offense.
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We hope that one of the useful roles that Stripe can play is in collecting and publishing empirical data pertaining to entrepreneurship and industry in Europe. There's growing appetite to get Europe on a better footing, and cross-sectional comparisons can often shine light on where opportunities lie. If you're interested in this kind of thing, we publish more at stripeeconomics.substack.com.
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Tim Duy retweeted
Tariffs on Canada are such a weak reason for becoming hawkish as they hardly moved the statutory rate for even Canada. The Fed has to be more careful citing government policies to explain their views lest they create perceptions of political bias tradewartracker.com/
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