Our friend, Justin Wolfers, is a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and author of the Platypus Economics Substack. In this episode, he joins me for a very wide-ranging conversation: We touch on everything from the economic impact of Trump’s renewed war with Iran to Trump’s crypto scam to the impact of AI, and the importance of the humanities in our Age of Tech.
Wolfers was one of nearly 200 economists who signed an open letter about AI:
Artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology, and policymakers must move equally quickly to figure out how to respond, a group of economists and researchers are warning.
“A.I. may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years,” the researchers wrote in a statement released on Monday, adding that the technology “could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.”
The statement, titled “We Must Act Now,” was signed by nearly 200 people, including 15 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of two of the leading A.I. labs, Open AI and Anthropic. Other notable signatories include Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist.
You can read the whole thing here.
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Some highlights on my conversation with Justin Wolfers
Buying the presidency has become profitable
Trump fleeces his fans with crypto.
If political leaders ignore AI, we lose.
The incompetence of Trump’s Iran fiasco
