Navigating Public Policy, Technology, Health, Data, and Innovation for a Fairer Future
Americans of a certain age learned that the dollar was once backed by gold. The real history was messier than the classroom version, but the core idea held: behind the paper sat an asset the government could not print. Congress could pass any law it liked, but it could not legislate another million ounces into Read More “The Treasury Standard: Stablecoins, Gold, and the Debt Behind the New Dollar”
A factory can have a full order book, a skilled workforce, and every intention of opening on Monday morning. Its executives can have secured financing, negotiated shipping contracts, and purchased sophisticated equipment. Yet a missing component can render all that preparation useless. The value of the missing part may be modest. Its power over everything Read More “What does China want in return?”
Kris Silas was driving home from work when he passed an abandoned restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, and noticed something wrong. The door had been removed from an energized, pad-mounted transformer, leaving dangerous equipment exposed. Silas was an electrical technician, so he understood what most drivers would not have recognized. The ordinary-looking box beside the road Read More “The Republic of the Reliable”
I wanted to buy American artificial intelligence. That sentence should not need explaining. My company builds and tests AI systems for a living. A new frontier model comes out, and I want to run it through the same evaluation harness I use for everything else. I don’t need unlimited access. I don’t need another giant Read More “China Is Selling AI the Way Businesses Want to Buy It”
The most consequential financial decision many Americans make before they are old enough to rent a car begins with a form. A student sits across from a financial aid officer, or more often now in front of a laptop, and agrees to borrow money for an education whose value cannot yet be known. The student Read More “Your College Has Great Confidence in Your Future. Just Not Enough to Cosign”
Uber announced this week that it is cutting roughly 3,300 jobs, about 10 percent of its global workforce, while trimming the ranks of managers by 20 percent. The company framed the move as an effort to get “simpler and faster” and redirect resources toward ride-sharing, delivery, and its autonomous-vehicle ambitions. Something was conspicuously missing from Read More ““Simpler and Faster” May Be the New Term for AI Layoffs”
A small gathering of aspiring developers in South Bend, Indiana, does not look much like the opening scene of an American success story. There is no ceremonial shovel, architectural rendering or oversized check. The conversation concerns renovation costs, financing, contractors and the stubborn arithmetic of bringing a neglected property back into use. Experienced builders explain Read More “Capacity Is What Remains”
There are moments in business when the price tells you that you are looking at the wrong thing. NVIDIA is reported to have agreed to pay $12.9 billion for Hugging Face, a company whose annual revenue has been put at roughly $150 million. Reuters carried the story on August 27, relaying reporting from The Information, Read More “The Empire Strikes Back”
A woman walks into a public library because she needs to print a form. That is the problem she presents. The problem she has is larger. She needs the form for unemployment benefits, which she needs because the car stopped running, which cost her the shifts she missed, which is why the electric bill went Read More “The People Close Enough to Notice”
Hank Green took some heat recently for using artificial intelligence in his work. Vanity Fair framed the controversy around the anger of some fans who believed his use of AI crossed a line between technological assistance and creative authenticity. One Hank would like to stand up for another. The criticism raises a larger question that Read More “Hank Green, AI, and the Economics of Authenticity”