What should we do about high skilled immigration and why? This is the topic of my huge new report with @LettieriDC and @cojobrien: Exceptional by Design. Quick thread on why I think you should read this report.
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Adam Ozimek✓
@ModeledBehavior
Chief economist at @InnovateEconomy. Host of the EconTwitter Water Cooler, live on twitter spaces and downloadable here: https://t.co/toyjfDruRu
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- Adam OzimekRT @jordanmcgillis: Which party do workers favor heading into the midterms? Here's one last thread with data from the new @InnovateEconomy / @EchelonInsights American Worker Survey. With the cost of living at the top of their minds, workers look set to vote heavily D. 🧵04068
- It's a good thing protectionism doesn't cause uncertainty...NBER @nberpubsTrade allows specialization, but specialization is risky. Workers avoid volatile sectors, often the ones where scale pays off most. Result: US gains from trade fall ~20 percent, from @xiaomaucsd and Natalia Ramondo0021.6K
Trade allows specialization, but specialization is risky. Workers avoid volatile sectors, often the ones where scale pays off most. Result: US gains from trade fall ~20 percent, from @xiaomaucsd and Natalia Ramondo
10254.1K- How is this a New York Times newpaper article? Get a life
20131.8K - Is there some Mao fan chat room where everyone decided this is the week to come out?Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrandA reminder for those who forgot recent history that there was a time - not that long ago - when France used to have its own independent view of the world. A time when France's range of acceptable opinion on China was wide enough that its flagship news magazine (not at all known for its communist leanings) hailed Mao as "a giant of history, poet, strategist and prophet" on a 1976 cover 👇 And a time when a centre-right French president - Giscard d’Estaing - mourned him as "a beacon of world thought" ( Today, saying something even remotely positive - or even neutral/nuanced - about China immediately gets you branded as a "CCP propagandist paid by China to bring down the West" 😅 I laugh but it's actually pretty sad when you think about it: not that France should go back to calling Mao - or Xi - a prophet, but, almost by definition, a country whose range of acceptable opinions has so dramatically shrunk in so little time has entered a new dark age, branding every dissonant voice a heretic and every attempt at understanding an act of treason. Which means, somewhat paradoxically, that those who refuse the doxa and still dare to express nuanced opinions, and get called traitors for it, may actually be the most patriotic of the lot, those who believe in France the most.51402.4K
A reminder for those who forgot recent history that there was a time - not that long ago - when France used to have its own independent view of the world. A time when France's range of acceptable opinion on China was wide enough that its flagship news magazine (not at all known for its communist leanings) hailed Mao as "a giant of history, poet, strategist and prophet" on a 1976 cover 👇 And a time when a centre-right French president - Giscard d’Estaing - mourned him as "a beacon of world thought" ( Today, saying something even remotely positive - or even neutral/nuanced - about China immediately gets you branded as a "CCP propagandist paid by China to bring down the West" 😅 I laugh but it's actually pretty sad when you think about it: not that France should go back to calling Mao - or Xi - a prophet, but, almost by definition, a country whose range of acceptable opinions has so dramatically shrunk in so little time has entered a new dark age, branding every dissonant voice a heretic and every attempt at understanding an act of treason. Which means, somewhat paradoxically, that those who refuse the doxa and still dare to express nuanced opinions, and get called traitors for it, may actually be the most patriotic of the lot, those who believe in France the most.
1294972.2K62.8K- Adam OzimekRT @AMLabEcon: If Agentic AI was around 20 years ago the Winklevoss brothers wouldn't have brought Zuckerberg into their project.01092
- Adam OzimekRT @jordanmcgillis: Since the start of last year, job growth has been weakest in blue metros, stronger in red metros, and strongest in purple metros. The latest @InnovateEconomy from @kenanfikri:05097
- Adam OzimekRT @alexolegimas: I joined @GoogleDeepMind to develop a research program on the economics of AGI. Today, together with Andrew Koh (@andrewjkoh) and Shane Legg (@ShaneLegg), we are incredibly excited to release The Economics of Intelligence, the first in a series of projects from our group on how AGI will change the economy. How do capability improvements transform the economy, and when? In this project, we define thresholds of economic capabilities, e.g., minimal AGI, based on how they transform the economy. We then track how the economy–market structure, employment, and wages–changes during the transition across capability regimes. We have seen exponential increases in what AI agents can do but the broader economy seems almost remarkably unchanged. Part of the reason is that the solo AI agent is the wrong economic object; economic transformation is an equilibrium outcome where organizations compete. Looking at how intelligence functions within organizations, transformation will depend on when two key capability thresholds are crossed: competence (gains on individual skills, e.g., coding, math) and coordination (gains on ability of agents to cooperate and work together). We show that what economic transformation looks like depends on whether AI becomes supercompetent, supercooperative, or both—the regime of artificial superintelligence (ASI). Tracking this transition shows why the real visible transformation may come from improvements in coordination—a capability most benchmarks don’t yet track. Past a certain threshold, AI capabilities can break the Coasian ceiling on firm size and lead to an economy that looks drastically different than the one we see today. Two main takeaways: 1. To understand the path of transformation, we should be tracking agentic coordination more closely. 2. The impact of AI will likely show up in wages before market structure or employment. We are really excited about this paper. Excited to hear people’s thoughts. Link:0283080
- Adam OzimekRT @Fritschner: The Cheesecake Factory stuff is a really good encapsulation of conservative discourse during the Obama era for folks not old enough to have experienced it. Endless whining and mind-loss over something they wouldn’t even notice if someone else said it. Eight years of that!09540117
- Adam OzimekRT @annastansbury: UK's Lost Decades starting to look worryingly like Japan's
Paul Johnson @PJTheEconomistThis puts into perspective. You can see average income growth over a 60 year period. This decade by the far the worst. Even worse than in 2010s which, at the time, were the worst in post war history.010085 - In a recent NYT debate, Paul Kedrosky claimed that 80% of Anthropic revenues come from 8 companies. He claimed Meta alone makes up 10%. As Azeem Azhar pointed out, this concentration was declining over time and we'd have an answer in the S-1. The S-1 tells us: "No single customer represented more than 10% of our revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2026. Approximately 79% of our revenue came from customers outside of our top five customers for the three months ended September 30, 2026, up from approximately 64% for the three months ended March 31, 2026." So that resolves it. Concentration is below the levels Kedrosky warned of, and falling.
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Paul Johnson@PJTheEconomistPosty @PJTheEconomistThis puts into perspective. You can see average income growth over a 60 year period. This decade by the far the worst. Even worse than in 2010s which, at the time, were the worst in post war history.
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Ethan Mollick @emollickGiven how out-of-nowhere it seems to many, it is astonishing that there was a small group of people who predicted with remarkable accuracy everything that is happening in AI today a decade ago (@kevinroose shows this in The AGI Chronicles). Many are now very rich and/or powerful110598.7K- Worst part will be if there is an AI correction in the future and this guy and his fans will consider it complete vindicationJustin Watt @justwattZitron’s track record on being wrong about AI feels like when BlackBerry kept saying iPhones would go bust.01241.8K
Given how out-of-nowhere it seems to many, it is astonishing that there was a small group of people who predicted with remarkable accuracy everything that is happening in AI today a decade ago (@kevinroose shows this in The AGI Chronicles). Many are now very rich and/or powerful104631.2K94.4K
Zitron’s track record on being wrong about AI feels like when BlackBerry kept saying iPhones would go bust.
394166227.7K- Adam OzimekRT @phl43: It's funny that a lot of people in the replies object that such a comparison makes no sense, on the ground that unlike South Korea Poland has no global brands, but perhaps there is a lesson here about how the discourse on development shouldn't focus so much on shiny objects!Marcin Piatkowski @mmpiatkowskiPoland 🇵🇱 and South Korea 🇰🇷: two global growth champions with two different growth models and social outcomes. Over three decades both grew fast (4.2% vs 3.7% a year per capita) and reached the same productivity (~$52/hour), but with very different R&D spending: 1.4% vs 5.1% of GDP. On social outcomes, Poland ranks #24 in world happiness vs Korea's #67, with half the suicide rate and a third of the old-age poverty (13% vs 40%) 👇 The shared challenge: among the lowest fertility rates in the world, 1.07 and 0.80. @Noahpinion @KoreaEconInst0180122
- Adam OzimekRT @JosephPolitano: I like how you can actually see Spider-Man & The Odyssey finally push movie theatre sales above pre-COVID levels* in the most recent GDP data *(well, at least before you adjust for inflation)04068
Marcin Piatkowski@mmpiatkowskiPoland 🇵🇱 and South Korea 🇰🇷: two global growth champions with two different growth models and social outcomes. Over three decades both grew fast (4.2% vs 3.7% a year per capita) and reached the same productivity (~$52/hour), but with very different R&D spending: 1.4% vs 5.1% of GDP. On social outcomes, Poland ranks #24 in world happiness vs Korea's #67, with half the suicide rate and a third of the old-age poverty (13% vs 40%) 👇 The shared challenge: among the lowest fertility rates in the world, 1.07 and 0.80. @Noahpinion @KoreaEconInst
253928188.3K- From the guy who brought us DOGE?Elon Musk @elonmusk@battleangelviv Saving money for the distant future is pointless with the advent of super intelligent abundance92604.3K
- Adam OzimekRT @benjedwards: I’ve revived my Apple II Agent project from January: An Apple IIe with an Ethernet card and a custom client It links to Claude through a Mac proxy and allows conversational Apple II software creation similar to Claude Code When it’s done, it loads the new program into memory0430121
Posty @battleangelviv@battleangelviv Saving money for the distant future is pointless with the advent of super intelligent abundance4.4K1.5K17.1K2.5M- Adam OzimekRT @emollick: Two and a half years from this.
Dan Roberts @danintheoryWe are announcing three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics about harmonic analysis, complexity theory, and quantum field theory.0460101 - Adam OzimekRT @jasonfurman: If you believe that mindless AI evaluations are legitimate then why would you spread the evaluation of Saez & @gabriel_zucman without first subjecting it to its own mindless AI evaluation? I just did and it turns out the critic's errors all go in one direction.085075
We are announcing three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics about harmonic analysis, complexity theory, and quantum field theory.3101.1K7.5K2.5M- Adam OzimekRT @scottlincicome: NYT reports that among House Majority Dems' Day One priorities next year would be to pass legislation "to end Mr. Trump’s tariffs and restore congressional power over trade policy."01380119
- Adam OzimekRT @KelseyTuoc: I think it's only moderately embarrassing for Zitron that he got this stuff wildly wrong. It's valuable to have someone making the bear case! But it's extremely frustrating that he hasn't admitted this was completely incorrect and explained where he thinks he went wrong.Jon Evans @rezendiSome entertaining highlights from 20 months ago: - "Anthropic has projected (made up) that it will make at least $12 billion in revenue in 2027" - "This company is not worth $60 billion. Anthropic has raised $14.7 billion to create an also-ran Large Language Model company" - "Anthropic, much like OpenAI, has categorically failed to productize its Large Language Model" - "Its CEO is also a sleazy conman who, like Sam Altman, continually promises that his company's AI systems will become powerful and autonomous in a way that they have never shown any possibility of becoming." - "Any investor in Anthropic needs to seriously consider what it is they're investing in. Its products are both unpopular and commoditized, and it lost $5.6 billion last year! Stop dancing around this fact! Stop it!" - "there’s a lot of demand to put AI in stuff and some demand to buy stuff with AI on it by enterprises buying software, but little evidence to suggest significant user adoption or usage, I’d argue because Large Language Models do not lend themselves to features that provide meaningful business returns." - "When a company uses the term “agent,” they are intentionally trying to be deceitful, because the term “agent” means “autonomous AI that does stuff without you touching it.” The problem with this definition is that everybody has used it to refer to “a chatbot that can do some things while connected to a database,” which is otherwise known as a chatbot." - "It isn’t working. The users aren’t there. The revenue isn’t there. The best time to stop this was two years ago, and the next best time is as soon as humanly possible. I have said that generative AI is a group delusion in the past, and I repeat that claim today." - "we are approaching the limit of what the transformer-based architecture can do, if we haven’t already reached it. No amount of beating off about test-time compute and connecting Large Language Models to other Large Language Models is going to create a new use case for this technology" - "generative AI is OpenAI. The consumer adoption of this software has completely failed, and appears to be going nowhere fast. ChatGPT is sustained entirely on deranged, specious hype drummed up by a media industry" ... and my favorite ... - "I will keep writing this stuff until I’m proven wrong."0290122
- When claude messes something up it should offer to give back your tokens951756.5K
Some entertaining highlights from 20 months ago: - "Anthropic has projected (made up) that it will make at least $12 billion in revenue in 2027" - "This company is not worth $60 billion. Anthropic has raised $14.7 billion to create an also-ran Large Language Model company" - "Anthropic, much like OpenAI, has categorically failed to productize its Large Language Model" - "Its CEO is also a sleazy conman who, like Sam Altman, continually promises that his company's AI systems will become powerful and autonomous in a way that they have never shown any possibility of becoming." - "Any investor in Anthropic needs to seriously consider what it is they're investing in. Its products are both unpopular and commoditized, and it lost $5.6 billion last year! Stop dancing around this fact! Stop it!" - "there’s a lot of demand to put AI in stuff and some demand to buy stuff with AI on it by enterprises buying software, but little evidence to suggest significant user adoption or usage, I’d argue because Large Language Models do not lend themselves to features that provide meaningful business returns." - "When a company uses the term “agent,” they are intentionally trying to be deceitful, because the term “agent” means “autonomous AI that does stuff without you touching it.” The problem with this definition is that everybody has used it to refer to “a chatbot that can do some things while connected to a database,” which is otherwise known as a chatbot." - "It isn’t working. The users aren’t there. The revenue isn’t there. The best time to stop this was two years ago, and the next best time is as soon as humanly possible. I have said that generative AI is a group delusion in the past, and I repeat that claim today." - "we are approaching the limit of what the transformer-based architecture can do, if we haven’t already reached it. No amount of beating off about test-time compute and connecting Large Language Models to other Large Language Models is going to create a new use case for this technology" - "generative AI is OpenAI. The consumer adoption of this software has completely failed, and appears to be going nowhere fast. ChatGPT is sustained entirely on deranged, specious hype drummed up by a media industry" ... and my favorite ... - "I will keep writing this stuff until I’m proven wrong."2545577161K- I don't think literal Maoists should be able to use tenure as a shield. Colleges should be able to fire absolute morons and maniacs.161024713.1K
- Cheesemonger doesn't sound like a cheese expert but a cheese monster2163K
- Adam OzimekRT @mansourtarek_: Yes, a bet and a trade often look similar. But how they work is fundamentally different. A sportsbook sets the odds and takes the other side of your bet. Prediction markets are markets, where buyers and sellers compete to discover and produce efficient prices and enable important public benefits. What the market is about can change, but the structure doesn't. My op-ed on prediction markets and regulation:0950116
- Posty @ModeledBehaviorYou only monger a few things. Cheese, fish, hate, war.3281.7K
- Adam OzimekRT @phl43: I get being pissed off and losing your cool on this website, it also happens to me, but there are some people who seem to do nothing but getting into fights and insulting people. Almost every time I see one of their tweets, they are abusing someone and, when I check their profile to see if that’s just selection bias due to the algorithm boosting this kind of tweets, all I see is more tweets of them angrily berating people.050115
- Adam OzimekRT @GovernorShapiro: Starting next school year, a bell-to-bell cell phone ban will take effect in every single Pennsylvania classroom. We’re getting back to the basics and keeping our classrooms focused on learning.01350110
- Adam OzimekRT @LeoAdberg: @Bloomberg churned through three completely different guys all playing the @TheStalwart character and thought we wouldn't notice0190125
- Adam OzimekRT @ProducerCities: "Suburbs are no longer the residential islands they used to be," said Dan Potter, director of the Houston Population Research Center at the Kinder Institute. "There are 'mini-cities' popping up all around the area"030125
- I am supporter of Flock cameras. I think it would be bad if low trust in the government caused us to get rid of them. Think about things that cause low trust in the government. Those are problems.2031547.8K
- This reminds of the old concept of “guard labor” that Samuel Bowles used to write about0022.7K
- Cool chartEric Basmajian @EPBResearchAI productivity gains are showing up, but only in ~15% of jobs. The three heaviest AI adopters (information, professional services, finance) went from a 2.2% productivity trend to 5.0% since 2022. The rest of the economy: 0.9% to 1.4%.00173.8K
- I want to use this to illustrate a market failure here. I want to read this nationally relevant Atlanta newspaper article, and I'd be willing to pay a little. But there's zero chance I am going to subscribe. I would click for one small payment, I'm not filling out forms.Patricia Murphy @MurphyAJCGov. Brian Kemp is well known to have a copious reading habit. One day he read that Audi was looking to build a U.S. manufacturing plant and the wheels started turning. @FitzTrubey has the amazing ticktock on the many years and dozens, maybe hundreds, of people it took to bring Audi to Georgia.301840425.9K
- NoBBC News (UK) @BBCNewsBefore you crank up the thermostat, try these tips to keep your house warmer for longer30355.1K
AI productivity gains are showing up, but only in ~15% of jobs. The three heaviest AI adopters (information, professional services, finance) went from a 2.2% productivity trend to 5.0% since 2022. The rest of the economy: 0.9% to 1.4%.
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Gov. Brian Kemp is well known to have a copious reading habit. One day he read that Audi was looking to build a U.S. manufacturing plant and the wheels started turning. @FitzTrubey has the amazing ticktock on the many years and dozens, maybe hundreds, of people it took to bring Audi to Georgia.62517575.1K
Before you crank up the thermostat, try these tips to keep your house warmer for longer33722141858K- I already loved the last two mission impossible movies but I bet they hit different now even just a year and half later as AI danger has become more real31134.3K
