Author: Joy Buchanan

Cowen on Smith at AdamSmithWorks

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I’m at AdamSmithWorks this week with “TYLER COWEN ON THE GREATEST ECONOMIST OF ALL TIME (GOAT)“

To be on Cowen’s short list is a compliment. Of all the thinkers and writers in recorded history, Adam Smith is one of only six writers that Cowen gives serious consideration to. Next, readers will ask, “Did our guy win?”

Tyler’s book will make no one happy because he does not take anyone’s side unequivocally. A huge fan of Adam Smith (and I know several) might have wanted a book about why Adam Smith is designated as the GOAT. I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone who hasn’t read it. What you will get is very interesting and thoughtful, so I hope you’ll read the manuscript* sometime, even if your guy doesn’t win.

*completely free – can get it on your Kindle somehow I heard

My previous posts about Tyler’s GOAT book:

Tyler Supporting Women in the GOAT book 

What We Are Learning about Paper Books  – I did write the AdamSmithWorks post in collaboration with the GPT version of the book, as a first step, along with my own memory of having read the book. And then, secondly, I consulted the book manuscript. The GPT performed fairly well… considering that it’s a GPT. I suppose I thought that interrogating the GPT would save me time. However, I can now say authoritatively that Tyler’s actual writing is so much better than what you will get from the GPT. Among other things, the GPT is much more boring than Tyler’s actual manuscript.

Classroom activities for teaching Monetary Policy

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I got lucky last week. I saw this tweet go by just in time to learn about some activities the I added to my unit on monetary policy.

It’s called the Monetary Policy Unit Plan

https://learn.mru.org/lesson-plans/monetary-policy-unit

I’m not using all of it, but it’s very helpful to see what other instructors have come up with to make teaching monetary policy more fun and more effective. You have to sign up to access it, using your official instructor email address.

It can feel relatively easy to talk to students about their role in the economy as consumers. It is relatively hard to lecture about central banking, because it is less relatable to everyday life. These exercises help us get into the “mind” of a bank.

Thank you to Econiful and Marginal Revolution University for making these resources available. There will probably be an equivalent for fiscal policy produced in the future.

Notes on ChatGPT from Sama with Lex

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This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #419 with Sam Altman 2. Sam Altman is (once again) the CEO of OpenAI and a leading figure in artificial intelligence. Two parts of the conversation stood out to me, and I don’t mean the gossip or the AGI predictions. The links in the transcript will take you to a YouTube video of the interview.

(00:53:22) You mentioned this collaboration. I’m not sure where the magic is, if it’s in here or if it’s in there or if it’s somewhere in between. I’m not sure. But one of the things that concerns me for knowledge task when I start with GPT is I’ll usually have to do fact checking after, like check that it didn’t come up with fake stuff. How do you figure that out that GPT can come up with fake stuff that sounds really convincing? So how do you ground it in truth?

Sam Altman(00:53:55) That’s obviously an area of intense interest for us. I think it’s going to get a lot better with upcoming versions, but we’ll have to continue to work on it and we’re not going to have it all solved this year.

Lex Fridman(00:54:07) Well the scary thing is, as it gets better, you’ll start not doing the fact checking more and more, right?

Sam Altman(00:54:15) I’m of two minds about that. I think people are much more sophisticated users of technology than we often give them credit for.

Lex Fridman(00:54:15) Sure.

Sam Altman(00:54:21) And people seem to really understand that GPT, any of these models hallucinate some of the time. And if it’s mission-critical, you got to check it.

Lex Fridman(00:54:27) Except journalists don’t seem to understand that. I’ve seen journalists half-assedly just using GPT-4. It’s-

Sam Altman(00:54:34) Of the long list of things I’d like to dunk on journalists for, this is not my top criticism of them.

As EWED readers know, I have a paper about ChatGPT hallucinations and a paper about ChatGPT fact-checking. Lex is concerned that fact-checking will stop if the quality of ChatGPT goes up, even though no one really expects the hallucination rate to go to zero. Sam takes the optimistic view that humans will use the tool well. I suppose that Altman generally holds the view that his creation is going to be used for good, on net. Or maybe he is just being a salesman who does not want to publicly dwell on the negative aspects of ChatGPT.

I also have written about the tech pipeline and what makes people shy away from computer programming.

Lex Fridman(01:29:53) That’s a weird feeling. Even with a programming, when you’re programming and you say something, or just the completion that GPT might do, it’s just such a good feeling when it got you, what you’re thinking about. And I look forward to getting you even better. On the programming front, looking out into the future, how much programming do you think humans will be doing 5, 10 years from now?

Sam Altman(01:30:19) I mean, a lot, but I think it’ll be in a very different shape. Maybe some people will program entirely in natural language.

Someday, the skills of a computer programmer might morph to be closer to the skills of a manager of humans, since LLMs were trained on human writing.

In my 2023 talk, I suggested that programming will get more fun because LLMs will do the tedious parts. I also suggest that parents should teach their kids to read instead of “code.”

The tedious coding tasks previously done by humans did “create jobs.” I am not worried about mass unemployment yet. We have so many problems to solve (see my growing to-do list for intelligence). There are big transitions coming up. Sama says GPT-5 will be a major step up. He claimed that one reason OpenAI keeps releasing intermediate models is to give humanity a heads up on what is coming down the line.

What the Superintelligence can do for us

Joy Buchanan6 Comments

These days, when I blog-rant about my everyday life, I have increasingly ended on the thought “AGI fixes this.”

Yesterday, I mused whether AGI would be my personal chef? : Where Can You Still Buy a Great Dinner in the US?

Would AGI help me match my clothes that I no longer want to humans who can use them, to cut down on pollution?: Joy’s Fashion Globalization Article with Cato

Would AGI make no mistakes about weather-related school closure?: Intelligence for School Closing

Can AGI book summer camp for me?

As a millennial woman working through my 30’s, I increasingly see social media posts from my friends like this one:

One of the difficult things about infertility, for my friends going through it, is the uncertainty. Modern medicine seems legitimately short on information and predictive analytics for this issue. So… AGI to the rescue, someday?

All I’m writing about tonight is that I have created a growing to-do list, over roughly the past year, for the AGI. Would something smart enough to do all of the above be dangerous? I wouldn’t rule it out. As pure speculation, it feels safer to have an AI that is specifically devoted to being a personal chef but which strictly cannot do anything else beside manage food. An AI that could actually do all of those things… would be quite powerful.

Here’s me musing about the AGI rising up against us, written after watching the TV show Severance: Artificial Intelligence in the Basement of Lumon Industries

Where Can You Still Buy a Great Dinner in the US?

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Last year, Jeremy wrote “Where Can You Still Buy an Affordable Home in the US?” He pointed out a few metro areas in the US that are not classified as “unaffordable”. All of the biggest cities have nice amenities such as great restaurants but are very expensive.

There is such a thing as an American town that is too small to find a good restaurant. But you don’t have to go all the way to the middle of New York or Chicago to find interesting menus. If you love food and good creative restaurants, there are some smaller cities that can deliver. Parking and hotels should be cheaper, so you can spend more of your money on food. (I don’t have any data on hand with regard to how menu prices in Birmingham compare to menu prices in NYC. Presumably they are lower here where labor is relatively cheaper.)

This list of cities was compiled in 2022. Birmingham, AL is on the list.  “10 Unexpected U.S. Cities With a Surprisingly Good Food Scene” 

I can recommend the following: “The 30 Best Restaurants In Birmingham, Alabama” (Southern Living, 2023)

To get a bit more recent national data: “Surging restaurant prices are making dining out a luxury” (CNN, 2024)

I think I care more about food quality than “service.” Nothing has bothered me about the gradual nation-wide shift away from table service toward placing my order at the counter or from a computer screen.

I don’t do much with them, but Jeremy is an advocate for restaurant apps. If you track deals and order directly through the app, you might save around 10% on low-to-mid quality restaurant food.

On a side note, I’m wondering if and when AI will approach the service level of a personal chef. I wish I could outsource all family meals to someone else. I have experimented with grocery delivery and “meal kits” and recipe apps. Nothing ever feels like a personal chef, although some of those services are nice to have. I feel like a superintelligence could encompass all of the restaurant apps, and grocery delivery and family meal planning together. I wish I could just enter a list of taste and health preferences and then not think about it anymore.

Let parents pay to take kids out of school

Joy Buchanan7 Comments

Elementary school kids can miss a day of school. If they are doing something wholesome and constructive on their day off, no one would claim that it hurts the child who is doing the alternate activity.

Does it hurt other people? There is an ungated section of this Matt Yglesias post concluding that when rich people pull their kids out of school it “… ultimately harms less-privileged children.” For now, assume that is true. We could internalize the externality, like surge pricing on toll roads. Let parents pay a fine to take their kids out of school. The fine would fund programs that help everyone. Let parents pay back into the public good. Charge $25/day which could go toward buying classroom supplies for the inconvenienced teacher.

This flexibility might lead to richer families keeping their kids in conventional schools, which seems like a good thing. No one would have to pay the fine. There is and would still be a system for excusing absences due to unavoidable things like surgery.

Requiring a doctor’s note for excused absences is already a tax. Requiring a parent to miss half a day of work to go take a child to the doctor is more punishing than paying a $25 fine, for many families.

The fine could even increase with the number of missed days. Only super rich families would be able to afford to take 2 children on a 3-week trip. I wouldn’t be able to afford it. But I wouldn’t mind if our school generated revenue off of those who can. Those people would probably donate a new playground in exchange for a plaque.

Is another example where it would be reasonable to charge people to not use something? In a way, insurance companies try to fine people for not using the gym. Running with this example, paid private schools could easily call this a tuition reimbursement for high attendance. Unfortunately, I think it would be politically impossible to implement in public schools.

Videos for Teaching Inflation in 2024

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I’m teaching principles of macro this semester. Making macroeconomics sound important to students is partly about explaining that recessions are painful and significant.

As Alex Tabarrok says, “The Great Depression is Over!”  Maybe Gen Z can appreciate the significance of the Great Depression, but it is history. Gen Z has heard of the Great Recession, but keep in mind that a student who is 20-y-o in 2024 was 4 in 2008. It’s a weird one, but there has been a recession more recently. The Covid Recession is what I like to link to, when possible, in class.

To teach the inflation chapter this week, I’m using video clips that I’ll put up here as resources for others.

To start off the inflation chapter and bring in a more global perspective, I show: “Zimbabwe’s inflation rate hits triple digits”  This 2-minute news clip was produced by Al Jazeera. They talk about lending and policy in addition to retail price increases.

After we have gone through some definitions, I show two clips of an economic forecast that was recorded in 2021. I don’t usually show such long clips in class, but I’m relying on dramatic irony to make it interesting. The students know the path that inflation took from 2020 to 2024, but Dr. Doti in the video does not. I stop the video occasionally to point out connections to our textbook.

Chapman University’s 2021 Economic Forecast Update was presented virtually on Wednesday, June 16, 2021.

Dr. Jim Doti predicts that an unprecedented increase in the money supply after Covid will lead to inflation. He’s not right about everything, but that’s what makes it so interesting. Right after showing students the quantity theory of money equation, I can show them someone trying to apply it from about minute 25 to about minute 35. (don’t start the video from minute 1)

Then, I go back to my lecture and introduce the Fisher effect. Next, we watch about minute 38 to minute 43 of the 2021 forecast because of the direct connection of inflation to interest rates. Partly this just helps illustrate how messy the real world is.

Also, I pull from one of Jeremy’s 2023 posts to illustrate the long run neutrality of money. “The Rate of Inflation is Falling, But Prices are Still Rising (And So are Wages)“

Books the 8-year-old likes

Joy Buchanan2 Comments

One of my personal interests is encouraging my kids to read. This is a list of books that my 8-year-old son really likes.

If you count Calvin and Hobbes as reading (it’s a comic book), then it is his first love and continues to be a favorite.  

Calvin and Hobbes (Volume 1) Paperback

The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book (Volume 4)

These next two are STEM-friendly goofy books with lots of pictures to break up the text. Currently, if he has to do independent reading time, these are first choices.

Big Bangs and Black Holes: A Graphic Novel Guide to the Universe

The 39-Story Treehouse

These chapter books are prime read-aloud choices for us to read to him that hold his interest.

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Silver Chair

Ender’s Game – Still incredible. Still feels futuristic, although the emphasis on “smart desks” instead of “smart phones” is funny. It was published in 1985.

The Great Brain

Bonus, for 5-year-olds:

The 5-year-old picked out “Woodpecker Wants a Waffle” at our local library and has been delighted by it. It’s a funny picture book that holds up to re-reads. See if your library has it. Public libraries are especially great for 5-year-olds who are ready to explore beyond the Dr. Suess classics at home but also not able to commit to any books worth buying.

Programmer Pain in Memes

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Memes communicate a lot of information, yet they are rarely preserved and explained.

It is February 2024. A friend of mine who works in tech just posted a fleet of funny memes about his job.

I have written a research paper and a policy paper about job selection into tech.

Research paper: “Willingness to be Paid: Who Trains for Tech Jobs?“

I found that enjoyment or subjective preferences are underrated in the policy literature on the skills gap and promoting STEM in America. In a presentation in the Spring of ’23, I speculated that ChatGPT or other AI-assisted coding tools would make coding less tedious and therefore more fun.

I observe in this set of memes (posted in February 2024) that ChatGPT is already embedded in coding life, and yet it does not feel like anything fundamental has changed. Workers still Google their own way to solutions (although surely that has diminished somewhat due to LLMs). The work still feels hard and the workers still feel undervalued.

Senior programmers today would have grown up working very closely with search engines, largely to harvest the vast knowledge contained in tech message boards. I myself use that tool often when I have to program. Part of learning to code is just learning how to get help. This requires a certain mindset that is different from what is traditionally taught in school.
Many such cases.
Many people who end up as programmers want to do better. They are driven to write clean sensible code. A common theme is frustration that the product does not match the vision. This sentiment comes up more frequently than I have seen in other professions. The work they do is truly hard, and they are rarely afforded enough time to do it “right.”
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Tyler Supporting Women in the GOAT book

Joy Buchanan1 Comment

Ladies, Tyler Cowen has done us a solid. He included John Stuart Mill as a contender for the greatest economist of all time in large part because of his insights on gender equality.

I’m short on time at the moment. I’d like to do a better job than this, with more nuance about Hayek, but here’s the most I can do this week:

More here: “John Stuart Mill on women, as explained by TC“

Or read the (free) GOAT book. I might say you should just jump to the Mill chapter, but it makes more sense in context if you read the whole thing.