The Post-Partisan Emporium

  The AI Bubble and the U.S. Economy:  How Long Do “Hallucinations” Last? By  Servaas Storm This paper argues that (i) we have reached “peak GenAI” in terms of current Large Language Models (LLMs); scaling (building more data centers and using more chips) will not take us further to the goal of “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI); returns are diminishing rapidly; (ii) the AI-LLM industry and the larger U.S. economy are experiencing a speculative bubble, which is about to burst. The U.S. is undergoing an extraordinary AI-fueled economic boom: The stock market is soaring thanks to exceptionally high valuations of AI-related tech firms, which are fueling economic growth by the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars they are spending on data centers and other AI infrastructure. The AI investment boom is based on the belief that AI will make workers and firms significantly more productive, which will in turn boost corporate profits to unprecedented levels. But the summer of ...

  Assassination Book Club I was at a book club at a pub in Cardiff, just after the Trump assassination attempt in July 2024. It wasn’t my book club, and I didn’t know I was taking part in it, but I accidentally got involved. Johnny Vedmore I hadn’t even read the book in question. I had taken a seat out the back of a local pub and was typing away as the table next to me began to fill with this group of youthful-looking readers ready to discuss a Salmond Rushdie book they’d been reading. I didn’t realise that was what they had planned, but I was soon drawn into the conversation they were having until I realised it was a book club, and I bowed out, only to return to typing. They sat talking for an hour or so, discussing the ins and outs of what appeared to be a relatively stale read, and each of the book club members gave away a little of their true natures while commenting on the book. As I typed, I overheard the conversation they were having, and after the book club was over, the ta...

  The Class of 2026 AI is doing to the universities what Gutenberg did to the monasteries John Carter Caspar David Friedrich,  Monastery Graveyard in the Snow By the late middle ages monasteries were spectacularly wealthy. They were immune from taxation, and possessed vast land holdings thanks to generous donations made over the centuries by nobles looking to assure themselves a comfortable place in the afterlife. Many of them performed economic functions, such as brewing beer or providing financial services; some performed charitable functions, distributing alms to the poor or operating hospitals; some performed spiritual functions, such as hosting holy relics or maintaining elaborate ritual vigils to intercede with God on behalf of the people. But their primary utility, from the perspective of the wider society, was as repositories, preservers, and disseminators of knowledge. Their  scriptoria  ensured that books were copied from one generation to the next, prevent...