Jonathan Libgober (same handle on other places)

Too many races to understand how things are going. Is there somewhere I can go tonight to just look up my continuation value?

For years, the Israel haters have insisted that the reason they obsess over Israel is not that they're antisemitic -- it's not that they have a weird obsession with the Jews. No, it's U.S. aid. "We're paying for the genocide!" was the platitude, one that twisted the meaning of "genocide" into oblivion and never bothered to ask what, exactly, the United States gets in return for its investment. On top of that, the Israel haters have made it clear they have a special animus for Benjamin Netanyahu. New York City's mayor, for example, told us he'd have him arrested if the prime minister stepped foot in the city. So, presumably, the end of U.S. aid to Israel and Israel's recent election (throwing into doubt Bibi's premiership) should lead to a rethinking about the Jewish state. Perhaps now there can be a new omnicause, a new "intersectional villain," as Haviv Rettig Gur has put it. Of course, that won't happen. The Jewish state -- and we should call Israel the Jewish state, because that is, after all, why we talk about it so much -- will remain the redoubt and purveyor of all that is evil. At least, to those who hate Jews. This is a hate that is remarkably resilient, virus-like, always morphing into new iterations and pseudo-arguments, always camouflaging itself. Soon, there will be a new pseudo-argument. We will be given a new rationalization for hating Israel -- *a* reason but not *the* reason. The Jew haters are loathe to admit that they simply hate Jews, that they are a cliché, that they are doing what countless losers, ideologues, opportunists and sociopaths have done since time immemorial. But that doesn't mean they're right. Beware the next pseudo-argument.

I’m on the 2026–27 economics job market, studying how clean energy policy can get the level of investment right, and still leave unrealized benefits by getting the location wrong. 1/5 #EconJobMarket #EnergyEconomics #EnvironmentalEconomics #AppliedMicroeconomics #CleanEnergy

With 3 days left to #ElectionDay, here’s part of the closing argument from @RogerMarshallMD. #kansassenate

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: institute.deepmind.com/essay…