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Ezra Klein Profile picture
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26 Nov, 5 tweets, 1 min read
I think this story on GPT-3 takes a little too much comfort in ways the system remains imperfect when the key fact is it’s getting better, at more and more varied tasks than anyone predicted, at astonishing speed. nytimes.com/2020/11/24/sci…
I’m not a big AI-apocalypse, or even AI-jobpocalypse guy, but the possible levels of both economic and just psychic disruption as AI shows it can do so much of what we do without sweat is real.
I mean:
Humans can make up jobs for themselves. And redistribution of AI-driven prosperity would be a good problem to have. But we need stories to tell ourselves about why our work matters. And over the next 20 or 30 years, a lot of those stories are going to be challenged.
Anyway happy Thanksgiving!

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
20 Nov
After nearly eight amazing years building, editing, and working at @voxdotcom, I am leaving to join @nytopinion, writing a reported column on policy and the policymaking process, and hosting an interview podcast.
Helping to build @voxdotcom has been the great privilege of my journalistic life. It is so much more than I ever could have imagined, and that’s because of the insanely creative, committed people who work there. I love them more than I can say. I will cheer them on forever.
I’ve always believed it’s important for founders to know when to let new generations take the reins. One of the great privileges in starting Vox was we got to build without anyone looking over our shoulder. We got to pursue our vision, make our mistakes, imagine our future.
Read 10 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
18 Nov
Just a real cool, vox.com/2020/11/18/215…
totally normal, not-at-all-trying-to-steal-an-election-no-way, vox.com/2020/11/18/215…
Republican Party we've got here vox.com/2020/11/18/215…
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
13 Nov
To offer a comment on this (good!) thread by Ross, you have to decide what you're trying to explain: The GOP's turn towards Trumpism, or increasingly sorted disagreement between the parties.
In the case of that piece, my focus is narrow: countermajoritarian institutions explain why Trumpism has been viable.

In their absence, American would still be very polarized. But it'd be polarized between better options, and the conflict would play out with better incentives.
Something I try to make clear in my book is that polarized disagreement isn't going away, and *nor should it*. What's important is how that disagreement maps onto other political institutions, from elections to parties to congress to the media. That's where our dysfunction lies.
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
13 Nov
One thing @anneapplebaum and I talk about towards the end of this podcast, and that I keep coming back to, is Trump wasn't even the hard test of our institutions.
He’s not an omnicompetent autocrat demanding we choose between effective governance and liberties. He’s not a strategic autocrat who hides his narcissism or nepotism. He’s not a beautiful speaker who cloaks his lust for power in glittering ideals.
And yet, the Republican Party fell so easily to him. So what happens when a more competent, capable, would-be autocrat tries this strategy, in a party where Trump already laid the groundwork? vox.com/21562116/anne-…
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
12 Nov
So @ronklain is a very good choice here, particularly right now, and I want to say a word on why
In 2014, the Obama administration made Klain "Ebola czar," and it was a controversial choice. Klain isn't a doctor, he didn't come with a deep public health background. His resume wasn't the obvious one.
But as I wrote here, and as proved true, the Obama admin understood what that job required, and the kind of talent you needed to run it. Responding to Ebola was a maddeningly difficult problem of intergovernmental coordination. vox.com/2014/10/17/699…
Read 9 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
11 Nov
America's only been a stable, real democracy since the 1960s, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. The roots are shallow.

The idea that its survival is assured, that the political forces that fought democracy for so long are gone, was fanciful.
I've been thinking a lot lately about something about something @ProfCAnderson once told me:
“America is aspirational. That is part of what sets it apart. Marginalized people have used those aspirations to say, ‘This is what you say you are, but this is what you do.’ But what also happens is those aspirations get encoded as achievements."
Read 4 tweets

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