Erik Brynjolfsson
@erikbryn
Director @DigEconLab Co-founder, @Workhelix @StanfordHAI @SIEPR @Stanford https://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technologies/dp/0393350649
TL;DR Congestion pricing in NYC works
🔥🚗🚗 Here we go, short-run effects of congestion pricing in NY. I feel like Twitter already figured this one out, but looking forward to seeing what Vasserman et al have to show us
Because LLMs could never, ever learn to rite with typos
How long before people intentionally put in typos to make sure people believe an LLM didn’t write a thing?
The folks in the Northeast corridor of the US create more GDP than any other megapolis in the world. They would create even more if they were better connected.
Alon Levy thinks we could turn both DC-NYC and NYC-Boston into sub-2-hour commutes. And we could do it for 6x cheaper than Amtrak's estimate.
Interesting and well-researched article from @FinancialTimes discussing what's known so far on AI and entry level workers. Expect more studies soon using high quality data, including by our group at @DigEconLab. ft.com/content/99b6ac…
Infants under 1 years old in the US: + 2.2x higher premature birth + 2.39x higher incidence of sudden unexpected infant death Children and teens 1-19 years old in the US: + 15x increased risk of gun-related incidents + 2.45x increased risk of car crashes Additionally, obesity,…
Slowly at first, and then suddenly.
When will an AI win a Gold Medal in the International Math Olympiad? Median predicted date over time July 2021: 2043 (22 years away) July 2022: 2029 (7 years away) July 2023: 2028 (5 years away) July 2024: 2026 (2 years away) metaculus.com/questions/6728…
LLMs have their own way of communicating
New paper & surprising result. LLMs transmit traits to other models via hidden signals in data. Datasets consisting only of 3-digit numbers can transmit a love for owls, or evil tendencies. 🧵
"How much time do I have left? I don't mean for this presentation, I mean as a professional economist." -@JWaldfogel discussing a paper at our @nberpubs Workshop on the Economics of AI last week 😱
AI can, and should, augment our thinking, not merely match and replace it.
Modeling computers and AI as cognitive tools provides a lens to interpret evidence on inequality, workflows, and teams, from @professor_ajay, @joshgans, and @avicgoldfarb nber.org/papers/w34034
56 years ago today, I watched the moon landing on TV with my parents. I never imagined that we wouldn't be back multiple times by now, not to mention Mars and beyond.
Do you believe… 56 years ago today, the 🇺🇸 flag flew proudly on the moon, but only for 14 hours. Here are four Apollo 11 artifacts from the collection, each a memento of heroic achievement by humanity: 1) Neil Armstrong’s CM hand controllers, flown to the moon and back. 2)…
How high will spending on data centers go?
Capex spend on AI data centres has reached 1.2% of US GDP. That has surpassed Dotcom era spend on telecom equipment (1%) but still trails railroad spend in 1880s (6%).
America draws strength from being a magnet for talent.
🚨 BREAKING: Detailed list of all 44 people in Meta's Superintelligence team. — 50% from China — 75% have PhDs, 70% Researchers — 40% from OpenAI, 20% DeepMind, 15% Scale — 20% L8+ level — 75% 1st gen immigrants Each of these people are likely getting paid $10-$100M/yr.
The pace of progress in AI is both uneven and remarkable. A year ago, ChatGPT was having trouble counting the number of r's in strawberry. Our economy and society is not ready for what's coming.
1/N I’m excited to share that our latest @OpenAI experimental reasoning LLM has achieved a longstanding grand challenge in AI: gold medal-level performance on the world’s most prestigious math competition—the International Math Olympiad (IMO).
Poor people eat more healthy food when they get a lump-sum of cash
Using the Earned Income Tax Credit to study how an influx of cash affects food expenditure patterns of eligible households, from @emmajlag, Leslie McGranahan, and @dwschanz nber.org/papers/w34007