Merkez Bankası’nın faizi arttırması konusunda bazı düşünceler.
Objektif olarak baktığımız zaman 7.50% faiz arttırımı doğru yönde bir karar. Geçen ayki hayal kırıklığı yaratan ve beklentinin çok altında kalan faiz artırımından sonra, bu yeni karar Merkez Bankası’nın belki de gerçekten enflasyona karşı mücadeleye başladığının göstergesi olabilir.

Is centralization of information good? This question is crucial for our evaluation of what large language models (LLMs) will bring, but its relevance is still imperfectly appreciated. A new thought-provoking paper may add to rethinking: arxiv.org/abs/2307.07367 One of the most impressive achievements of ChatGPT is to provide information on technical matters, including computer programming (e.g., ). However, reliance on ChatGPT also displaces other forms of information sharing and generation.arxiv.org/pdf/2302.06590…

There is much discussion of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action at elite colleges, both from left and the right. The disappointment from those who want to see greater inclusivity and greater openness to minorities in elite colleges is understandable. And so is the elation of Asian-Americans who were systematically discriminated under the existing system.

Some thoughts on the coup attempt in Russia. What transpired shows first and foremost that Putin’s regime was not as secure as many pundits and Russia experts claimed. E.g.: . Why is that?nytimes.com/2023/06/25/wor… We may want to start by considering how a leader remain in power. Three mechanisms: (1) institutional means (broadly construed to include political norms); (2) persuasion; (3) coalitions. Any leader’s power is a combination of three.

Türkiye ekonomisi konusunda İngilizce attığın mesajların Türkçe bir özetini vereceğim şimdi. Mehmet Şimşek’in atanmasından sonra bir çok yabancı ve Türkiyeli yatırımcıda daha iyimser bir yaklaşım var. Gerçekten de daha rasyonel politikalar Türk ekonomisine katkıda bulunabilir.

There is optimism some quarters about the Turkish economy (e.g., bloomberg.com/news/articles/… or capitaleconomics.com/publications/e…) after President Erdoğan appointed Mehmet Şimşek as the Minister of Finance, and the new minister promised a return to more “rational” policies in his first speech. Indeed, returning to more meaningful macroeconomic policies, including some more room for independence at the central bank and real efforts to fight inflation, could only help the Turkish economy.

Continuing from the previous thread:
10. Ideas as memes. One can go even further and revisit the ideas originally proposed by Richard Dawkins: amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-A… Leaving aside the fact that “memes” were taken over (not so interestingly) by the ad industry, there are some deep issues raised by Dawkins. His discussion anticipates the later important literature spearheaded by people like Boyd and Richerson: amazon.com/Not-Genes-Alon…

Following up on the thread from June 12: so how should we conceptualize the role of ideas? I’m not sure, but here are some speculative directions. 1. Ideas as affecting preferences and choices. The simplest way in which ideas, or social responsibility, would matter is that they convince the majority of the agents. E.g., if not polluting becomes widely accepted, each individual is more likely to reduce pollution.

AI myths roundup. In conclusion, I want to summarize my main arguments and explain the overarching viewpoint. Briefly, I wrote these threads because I believe that there are almost “mystical” claims about AI, and especially generative AI (hence my language of myths). I am convinced that generative AI is a very promising technology — but only if it is used in the correct way. I am also convinced that it is not currently being used in the correct way and the myths that I have argued against are partly responsible for this distorted path.

Bu mesaj dizisinde yapay zekanın niye denetlenemez olduğunu savunan argümanlara karşı görüşler sunuyorum. Birincisi, yapay zekayı ve özellikle büyük modelleri geliştirmeyi yavaşlatmak mümkün, ve bunu değişik teknolojilerle daha eskiden yapıldığı da belirtme biliriz

AI myth 5. You cannot regulate AI. Well, I think I don’t need to work very hard to fight against this one. But it is surprising how often one hears this claim. It has three versions, neither of which holds much water in my opinion. Version 1. AI is so dynamic and ubiquitous that it cannot be regulated. It is claimed that calls for opposing the training of large language models are misguided because they could never be implemented, because if you prevent large companies doing it, others will fill the void.

AI myth 4. The big benefits myth --- that generative AI advances are creating tremendous social value. This again may be true or false. We just don’t have enough evidence to conclude one way or another, and there are various concerns shedding doubt on the strongest claims. First, a lot of the “wisdom” of large language models come from the fact that they have expropriated creative data of others. What would ChatGPT would be without Wikipedia? Without digital books? It is impossible to know, but I would guess not much.

AI myth 3. Abundance myth. Building on AI myths 1 and 2, a third, and perhaps more pernicious one emerges: automation and human-like performance by AI will bring economic abundance, out of which all or most of society will benefit. There are many versions of this, going back to IJ Good’s statement that “the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”

AI myth 2. Path to AGI: Advances in generative AI are taking us towards artificial general intelligence. E.g., most recently by several leading AI experts and entrepreneurs: safe.ai/statement-on-a…. Or recent articles showing “sparks of AGI” from GPT-4: arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712. Once you think that machine-human mind analogies at the root of AI myth 1 are questionable, AI myth 2 becomes less convincing as well. If there is something quite special about the human mind, even large models of generative AI will not get us there.

AI myth 1. Turing hypothesis, about computers and the human mind. Alan Turing made huge breakthroughs in mathematics, including with his analysis of computable functions. His ideas also shaped the way that many people think about the human mind. A universal Turing machine can compute any computable object. Turing then worked on whether computers (and thus Turing machines) can be intelligent — meaning that they can do the mental steps that humans do.

Motivated by what I see as misleading articles in coverage in the media, I will post a number of threads in the next several days on “AI myths” — ideas or claims about AI that should be questioned more. A couple of explanations would be useful to put these into context. First, by “myths” I do not necessarily mean that the statements I will focus on are necessarily incorrect. I claim that they are accepted without sufficient evidence and they need to be questioned more, because they are having an oversized effect on public perceptions.

Another statement from leading AI experts and entrepreneurs has come out: safe.ai/statement-on-a…. It states “Mitigating the risk of global extinction from AI should be a global priority along other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”. To me, this is disappointing. Of course, we should worry about all risks, and global extinction would be terrible. Yet I believe that this is the wrong thing to focus on, for at least three reasons.

Do new technologies benefit workers? I used to think this was a simple question. And it is at the heart of my new book with @baselinescene, Power and Progress, amazon.com/Power-Progress… First of all, we need to be more specific about “workers”. The most optimistic answer is that all or most workers will benefit from technological advances (e.g., those increasing average labor productivity). But in general, some worker groups can be harmed.

Preliminary but fairly clear results from the runoff of the Turkish elections show that President Erdogan will have a historic third term. This has implications for democracy and the economy. For Turkish democracy, it’s not great news, but how bad things will be will depend on several factors. Let us distinguish five facets of democracy. First, judicial independence was very bad and probably cannot get much worse.

I understand that my thread on Hayek from last week was insufficiently clear on some issues, so perhaps it is useful to clarify a few things. First, thanks to all who commented and reacted to the thread. To start with, it is useful to clarify my main argument. It is this: we may no longer be able to identify the market with a decentralized system, because information and control of knowledge has become highly concentrated.

Question (I have often wondered): Do radical left political movements, including communist or socialist labor organizations, help or hinder workers’ interests?

Thread👇 On the pro side, radical left may be the “tip of the spear” for the labor movement, especially because it has more dedicated rank-and-file, organized around a common ideology. Threat from radical left may force capital owners to make concessions.