Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Tue, 16 Jun 2026 03:10:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cropped-MR-logo-thumbnail-32x32.png Marginal REVOLUTION https://marginalrevolution.com/ 32 32 42693868 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/educational-arbitrage.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=educational-arbitrage Educational arbitrage? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958078355/0/marginalrevolution~Educational-arbitrage.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/educational-arbitrage.html#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2026 05:18:10 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93218 Is it really all about the networking? Some people think so, and they are taking action: Justin Helman didn’t get his dream acceptance from the University of Florida. But that isn’t stopping him from pursuing the classic college experience there. The recent high-school graduate from Park Ridge, N.J., is set to move into a private apartment […]

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]]> Is it really all about the networking? Some people think so, and they are taking action:

Justin Helman didn’t get his dream acceptance from the University of Florida. But that isn’t stopping him from pursuing the classic college experience there.

The recent high-school graduate from Park Ridge, N.J., is set to move into a private apartment right by campus. He is enrolling in a UF online program for the first few semesters and paying an extra fee package to access services like the campus gym and student-section football-game tickets. He plans to study at the library, join clubs and might rush a fraternity.

“I’m going to get almost the entire same experience, and the only thing I’m really missing is going into class and dorming,” he said. “To me, it was just almost a no-brainer.”

More students like Helman are discovering there is another way into their dream schools.

Students who don’t get into major public flagships the traditional way are still participating in the social life of these campuses. The small-but-mighty group is moving to college towns, enrolling in online programs or nearby community colleges, living in private housing, joining Greek life, and attending game-day tailgates.

And it seems the arbitrage runs both ways:

The approach is sanctioned by the universities, which are expanding alternative-enrollment programs. “It’s a way to get what you want if the traditional, standard way doesn’t work,” said Beth Kraemer, a consultant for In College Consulting, who observed an uptick in this trend.

The programs can be a savvy way for universities to protect their rankings and generate revenue, said Adam Nguyen, founder of admissions-consulting firm Ivy Link. These are often students who narrowly missed the admissions cutoff.

Here is more from the WSJ, via Adam B.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/educational-arbitrage.html/feed 4 93218 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/ai-nationalism-europe-included.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ai-nationalism-europe-included AI nationalism, Europe included https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958077572/0/marginalrevolution~AI-nationalism-Europe-included.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/ai-nationalism-europe-included.html#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:31:55 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93211 Most of my Free Press column deals with Mythos, but here are some remarks on Europe: There is yet another huge problem behind all these first-order problems. Let us say, for instance, that France’s Mistral AI develops very nicely and serves as an EU counterpart of Anthropic and OpenAI. Well, then the other European countries […]

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]]> Most of my Free Press column deals with Mythos, but here are some remarks on Europe:

There is yet another huge problem behind all these first-order problems. Let us say, for instance, that France’s Mistral AI develops very nicely and serves as an EU counterpart of Anthropic and OpenAI. Well, then the other European countries will become highly dependent on the French. That may seem okay today, but it will be much less fun for the Germans if the French really do have all that extra power and leverage.

As for the French themselves, they would be highly dependent on a private company. France may end up with one such company, but it is unlikely to have three of them. So Mistral will in turn have high leverage over France, French politics, and French foreign policy. Let us hope they are up to that. The simple point is that being influenced by someone in your home country, even if it sounds more appealing rhetorically, is not always better than being pushed around by foreigners. Sometimes the foreigners are less oppressive and intrusive, if only because they care less about you.

Worth a ponder.  I am hearing good things about the new Mistral model, so these questions may become relevant sooner than I had thought when writing this.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/ai-nationalism-europe-included.html/feed 21 93211 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/disclosure-day-doubt-if-there-are-net-spoilers-in-this-post.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disclosure-day-doubt-if-there-are-net-spoilers-in-this-post *Disclosure Day* (doubt if there are net spoilers in this post) https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958075202/0/marginalrevolution~Disclosure-Day-doubt-if-there-are-net-spoilers-in-this-post.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/disclosure-day-doubt-if-there-are-net-spoilers-in-this-post.html#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2026 02:17:40 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93219 Perhaps rewatching The Omen is better prep for this movie than thinking about UFOs?  In this regard Disclosure Day is somewhat more interesting than I had been expecting. Peter Thiel, Ross Douthat, telephone! And yet I have plenty of quibbles.  It was a little too long.  The acting is entirely serviceable, but none of the […]

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]]> Perhaps rewatching The Omen is better prep for this movie than thinking about UFOs?  In this regard Disclosure Day is somewhat more interesting than I had been expecting.

Peter Thiel, Ross Douthat, telephone!

And yet I have plenty of quibbles.  It was a little too long.  The acting is entirely serviceable, but none of the characters are excellent or memorable.  The portraits of America are below the level of charm and insight we have come to expect from Spielberg.  And any time a character makes “a speech” it is pretty mediocre.

Cinematic influences are numerous, starting with E.T. and Close Encounters of course.  Not to mention Sugarland Express.  I was surprised to see the references to The Magic Flute, including the Bergman cinematic version.  Perhaps Spielberg had Jacob’s Ladder in mind as well?

The Freudian interpretation of the film I will not articulate, but it surfaces near the end and never quite goes away.

But who here was the Antichrist anyway?  That is up for grabs.

I had no problem sitting through the movie and enjoying it, but the problem of excess hodgepodge worsens as the exposition continues.  So I will grade this one as misunderstood, but nonetheless no better than an interesting failure.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/disclosure-day-doubt-if-there-are-net-spoilers-in-this-post.html/feed 7 93219 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/germany-fact-of-the-day-sentence-to-ponder.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=germany-fact-of-the-day-sentence-to-ponder Germany fact of the day sentence to ponder https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958066142/0/marginalrevolution~Germany-fact-of-the-day-sentence-to-ponder.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/germany-fact-of-the-day-sentence-to-ponder.html#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2026 18:38:29 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93208 Champions of a European AI model should ask themselves if a European effort would be more effective than Meta, which this year will spend more on chips ($125 billion) than Germany spends on defense ($114 billion) and offer salaries of over $100 million to attract the best researchers, and is still failing to catch up. Here is […]

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]]>

Champions of a European AI model should ask themselves if a European effort would be more effective than Meta, which this year will spend more on chips ($125 billion) than Germany spends on defense ($114 billion) and offer salaries of over $100 million to attract the best researchers, and is still failing to catch up.

Here is more from Pieter Garicano and Simon Grimm.  Via Jesper.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/germany-fact-of-the-day-sentence-to-ponder.html/feed 75 93208 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/monday-assorted-links-564.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=monday-assorted-links-564 Monday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958061378/0/marginalrevolution~Monday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/monday-assorted-links-564.html#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:38:44 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93203 1. A survey on slow Mexican economic growth. 2. Jason Furman on Social Security (NYT). 3. Markets in everything, customized water edition. 4. AI progress in Rio de Janeiro. 5. Satya Nadella does Oliver Williamson. 6. A shared feed of my guest appearances. 7. Results on the Great Recession and U.S. fertility. 8. Nice words […]

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]]> 1. A survey on slow Mexican economic growth.

2. Jason Furman on Social Security (NYT).

3. Markets in everything, customized water edition.

4. AI progress in Rio de Janeiro.

5. Satya Nadella does Oliver Williamson.

6. A shared feed of my guest appearances.

7. Results on the Great Recession and U.S. fertility.

8. Nice words about me.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/monday-assorted-links-564.html/feed 63 93203 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/republic-of-ireland-china-fact-of-the-day.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=republic-of-ireland-china-fact-of-the-day Republic of Ireland (China) fact of the day https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958053545/0/marginalrevolution~Republic-of-Ireland-China-fact-of-the-day.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/republic-of-ireland-china-fact-of-the-day.html#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2026 11:54:45 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93210 Sam Enright emails me: In the most recent census (2022), 1,017,437 people in Ireland were born abroad. Even if you classify people from Taiwan as “foreigners”, there are 845,697 + 157,886 = 1,003,583 immigrants to China. There are now more foreigners in Ireland than in China in absolute terms, despite having a population that is 260 times smaller.

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]]> Sam Enright emails me:

In the most recent census (2022), 1,017,437 people in Ireland were born abroad. Even if you classify people from Taiwan as “foreigners”, there are 845,697 + 157,886 = 1,003,583 immigrants to China. There are now more foreigners in Ireland than in China in absolute terms, despite having a population that is 260 times smaller.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/republic-of-ireland-china-fact-of-the-day.html/feed 65 93210 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/who-leads-relative-age-effects-on-social-capital.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=who-leads-relative-age-effects-on-social-capital Who Leads? Relative Age Effects on Social Capital https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958046813/0/marginalrevolution~Who-Leads-Relative-Age-Effects-on-Social-Capital.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/who-leads-relative-age-effects-on-social-capital.html#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2026 06:12:08 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93206 A fascinating paper and result: This paper studies the causal effect of being the oldest within a school cohort on social capital. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and data from Facebook, we find that boys who are older than their classmates make 11% more friends in high school. This social advantage is associated with […]

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]]> A fascinating paper and result:

This paper studies the causal effect of being the oldest within a school cohort on social capital. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and data from Facebook, we find that boys who are older than their classmates make 11% more friends in high school. This social advantage is associated with leadership roles, with relatively older boys 42% more likely to become class president than their relatively younger peers. Men who were relatively older during childhood have larger social networks in adulthood, and disproportionately sort into management and entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that small age differences in peer composition can have persistent effects on social and economic outcomes.

That is from Matthew Jacob of Harvard and Michael Bailey of Facebook.  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/who-leads-relative-age-effects-on-social-capital.html/feed 36 93206 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/general-purpose-large-language-models-outperform-specialized-clinical-ai-tools-on-medical-benchmarks.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=general-purpose-large-language-models-outperform-specialized-clinical-ai-tools-on-medical-benchmarks General-purpose large language models outperform specialized clinical AI tools on medical benchmarks https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958045922/0/marginalrevolution~Generalpurpose-large-language-models-outperform-specialized-clinical-AI-tools-on-medical-benchmarks.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/general-purpose-large-language-models-outperform-specialized-clinical-ai-tools-on-medical-benchmarks.html#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2026 05:16:01 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93207 This result does not surprise me at all.  Here is part of the abstract: Frontier LLMs outperformed clinical AI tools in all three evaluations. Clinical AI tools performed comparably to auto-enabled Google Search AI Overview on the RCQ. These findings highlight the need for independent, real-world evaluation of AI tools before they enter clinical settings. […]

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]]> This result does not surprise me at all.  Here is part of the abstract:

Frontier LLMs outperformed clinical AI tools in all three evaluations. Clinical AI tools performed comparably to auto-enabled Google Search AI Overview on the RCQ. These findings highlight the need for independent, real-world evaluation of AI tools before they enter clinical settings.

From Krithik Viswanath, et.al.  As a side note, this (and the more general version of the point) is one big reason why some fairly large number of Emergent Ventures proposals are rejected rather quickly.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/general-purpose-large-language-models-outperform-specialized-clinical-ai-tools-on-medical-benchmarks.html/feed 20 93207 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-pressure-no-spoilers.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-pressure-no-spoilers *The Pressure* (no spoilers) https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958040486/0/marginalrevolution~The-Pressure-no-spoilers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-pressure-no-spoilers.html#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:49:29 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93204 A truly excellent movie, one of the best of the year.  Specifically, it concerns the meteorological forecasts (!) leading up to the D-Day invasion.  Thematically, it is about the differences between Americans and Brits, how bureaucracy operates, the nature of leadership, and the proper role of science in government.  It is like an old-style Hollywood […]

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]]> A truly excellent movie, one of the best of the year.  Specifically, it concerns the meteorological forecasts (!) leading up to the D-Day invasion.  Thematically, it is about the differences between Americans and Brits, how bureaucracy operates, the nature of leadership, and the proper role of science in government.  It is like an old-style Hollywood movie.  Most of the action takes place in only a few rooms, and with superb dialogue and performances.  Although you all know how D-Day turns out, the movie still generates suspense on some of the major plot points.  Definitely recommended, here is the movie’s trailer.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-pressure-no-spoilers.html/feed 35 93204 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/sunday-assorted-links-571.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sunday-assorted-links-571 Sunday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958033676/0/marginalrevolution~Sunday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/sunday-assorted-links-571.html#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:41:52 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93202 1. Chinese overtake Dominicans as NYC’s most numerous foreign-born group. 2. David Hockney embraced tech (NYT).  And do not forget his writings, not to mention his persona and also his role in gay history and liberation.  He was truly one of the great Englishmen, as he had been doing first-rate work since what, 1954? 3. […]

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]]> 1. Chinese overtake Dominicans as NYC’s most numerous foreign-born group.

2. David Hockney embraced tech (NYT).  And do not forget his writings, not to mention his persona and also his role in gay history and liberation.  He was truly one of the great Englishmen, as he had been doing first-rate work since what, 1954?

3. Progress against lung cancer.

4. Average German date? And a six-minute video of a non-average German circus artist.  And an eleven-year-old German on the handpan, without training.

5. Measuring how New Yorkers responded to their game 4 playoff victory.  I have not seen data on game 5, though that was less of a surprise.

6. How The Bulwark is doing, and its economics (WSJ).

7. Become a telescope rancher those new service sector jobs (short video).

8. Bob Dylan (and others) on turning 80 (NYT).  Dylan’s answer is clearly the best.

9. Paul Graham on how to become a billionaire.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/sunday-assorted-links-571.html/feed 74 93202 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-cultural-war-is-a-civil-war.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-cultural-war-is-a-civil-war The Cultural War is a Civil War https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958027904/0/marginalrevolution~The-Cultural-War-is-a-Civil-War.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-cultural-war-is-a-civil-war.html#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2026 11:18:35 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93197 Kevin Bryan riffs on on my post The Nationalization of American Science. He is rightfully incensed: AT is right this is a red tape-filled science policy of “losers”. If you think “cut funds from DEI-driven professors in the small departments no one cares about” is more important than “make sure the world’s strongest fundamental science […]

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]]> Kevin Bryan riffs on on my post The Nationalization of American Science. He is rightfully incensed:

AT is right this is a red tape-filled science policy of “losers”. If you think “cut funds from DEI-driven professors in the small departments no one cares about” is more important than “make sure the world’s strongest fundamental science continues”, you’re an idiot.

And yes, this is also the policy of “right-wing JD-brain” folks. They haven’t worked in a lab. They don’t know how we got AI, and recent cancer breakthroughs, and on and on. It’s all culture war, all the time – just the right-wing equivalent of the worst left-wing habits.

One last thing: I *hate* the term “administration priorities” or “President’s priorities”. Totally Unamerican! The President *executes* the law created by Congress, who represent the people, and who see turnover every two years. Period. “Oh, but Democrats do this too!” Grow up!

Owning the libs may feel good today but please look just one move ahead in the game tree. When AOC controls the executive branch, she will inherit every tool Trump normalized. Look a few moves further and see the damage to American institutions.

The culture war is a civil war. If we don’t end it, American science will be collateral damage.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-cultural-war-is-a-civil-war.html/feed 136 93197 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-bullish-case-for-brazil.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-bullish-case-for-brazil The bullish case for Brazil https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958022645/0/marginalrevolution~The-bullish-case-for-Brazil.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-bullish-case-for-brazil.html#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2026 04:23:30 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93201 From Drew Crawford: Start with the most important number in economics, even though no one on Wall Street talks about it: calories per acre. Human civilization runs on food. Ten billion people will inhabit this planet by 2050. The amount of arable land is not growing. It is shrinking, every year, to urbanization, desertification, salinization, […]

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]]> From Drew Crawford:

Start with the most important number in economics, even though no one on Wall Street talks about it: calories per acre. Human civilization runs on food. Ten billion people will inhabit this planet by 2050. The amount of arable land is not growing. It is shrinking, every year, to urbanization, desertification, salinization, and topsoil erosion. The countries that can grow food at scale will be the most strategically valuable territories on earth. The countries with the best apps and the most PhDs will depend on the countries with the best dirt.

Brazil has more unused arable land than any country on earth. That sentence alone should stop every allocator in their tracks. It means that Brazil can approximately double its total cultivated area, without touching a single hectare of the Amazon, simply by converting degraded pasturelands in the Cerrado and other biomes into productive cropland using technology that already exists.

No other agricultural superpower has this headroom. The United States is fully utilized. China is losing farmland to urbanization at a rate that should terrify its central planners. India’s agricultural productivity gains are hitting diminishing returns against water stress and soil degradation. Europe is hemmed in by geography and regulation. Sub-Saharan Africa has theoretical potential, but lacks the roads, the ports, the legal frameworks, and the capital to exploit it within a generation.

Brazil is already the world’s largest net food exporter. It leads the world in soybeans, coffee, sugar, orange juice, beef, and poultry. It is the second-largest exporter of corn, pork, and ethanol, and recently surpassed the United States as the largest cotton exporter. Agribusiness generates approximately 25% of GDP and more than 40% of export revenue. And the agricultural sector has been growing productivity at 3-4% per year for two decades straight, driven by Embrapa’s tropical soil science, satellite-guided precision agriculture, and the industrialization of protein supply chains that stretch from feedlots in Mato Grosso to dinner tables in Shanghai.

A single farm in Mato Grosso can be more than twice the size of the state of Rhode Island. A literal fact. The Bom Futuro Group cultivates more than 700,000 hectares (roughly 2,700 square miles) of soybeans, corn, and cotton across 35 production units. This is farming at a scale that American and European investors cannot easily conceptualize, operating with GPS-guided machinery, drone monitoring, and soil analytics that rival anything in Iowa, but across an area that dwarfs it.

The post is interesting throughout and offers further points of interest.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/the-bullish-case-for-brazil.html/feed 47 93201 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/saturday-assorted-links-565.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saturday-assorted-links-565 Saturday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958013525/0/marginalrevolution~Saturday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/saturday-assorted-links-565.html#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2026 17:26:54 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93198 1. Soccer and economic growth. 2. The AI scenario for Europe? 3. The smart version of the AI is a bubble argument. 4. Ken Opalo reviews Studwell on Africa. 5. The influence of AI on non-fiction books? 6. The economics behind the San Antonio Spurs. 7. On the new Macca album.

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]]> 1. Soccer and economic growth.

2. The AI scenario for Europe?

3. The smart version of the AI is a bubble argument.

4. Ken Opalo reviews Studwell on Africa.

5. The influence of AI on non-fiction books?

6. The economics behind the San Antonio Spurs.

7. On the new Macca album.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/saturday-assorted-links-565.html/feed 56 93198 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/sometimes-it-is-hard-to-solve-for-the-equilibrium.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sometimes-it-is-hard-to-solve-for-the-equilibrium Sometimes it is hard to solve for the equilibrium https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958007183/0/marginalrevolution~Sometimes-it-is-hard-to-solve-for-the-equilibrium.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/sometimes-it-is-hard-to-solve-for-the-equilibrium.html#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2026 11:02:42 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93199 Probably you all know about this: The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must […]

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]]> Probably you all know about this:

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.

According to not yet confirmed but likely true reports, it was shown that model could be jailbroken.  The released Mythos already restricted bio and “AI improvement” queries, rather strictly in fact, so now we are back to the model not being available.

Here are a few of the constraints on the U.S. government, not the only ones I might add:

1. It needs for the main companies to stay in business.  On top of that, it wants their IPOs to go reasonably well.  And it is now much harder for the top companies to recruit foreigners, which is a significant share of their highest quality workforce (Demis, Ilya, Andrej for a start).  It is also much harder for the main companies to drum up foreign business in a credible and sustainble manner.

1b. How are American multinationals operating abroad supposed to use top systems, moving forward?

2. It wants to use model access as a tool of both hard and soft power, so model access has to be possible at some level.  But it is very hard to control what foreign agents will do with their partial model access, when they get it in the ffuture.

3. The U.S. needs to stay ahead of China in the AI race.

4. The U.S. needs to issue restrictions that are actually enforceable, and “U.S. citizens only” does not fit that bill.  Furthermore (markets in everything!) it is easy enough to hire a traitorous American to access tools of wrongdoing, or for matter it is not difficult to fake citizenship in various ways.

5. USG cannot nationalize these companies and then proceed to run them effectively.

6. Chinese and other open source models do in fact improve at some reasonable pace, even if they are right now considerably behind the best proprietary models.

Is the most likely scenario that the government hardens some of its own systems and takes some further precautions, and then allows Mythos to be rereleased?  Perhaps with some additional safeguards?

Is there such a thing as a model that cannot be jailbroken at all?  I doubt that.

So basically we will be replaying this scenario periodically over time, but with each time the companies and also the government in a weaker and more precarious position.

I am willing to reject the philosophy of “safetyism” and bite various associated bullets.  As it stands, these actions will not succeed in making us safer, including for the reasons mentioned above.  Our regulatory institutions, attitudes, and approaches simply are not well suited to an era of radical innovation.

In any case these events do not surprise me (they do surprise me in their immediate suddenness however), as this kind of approach is what governments have been about for a long time now, USG included or perhaps USG especially.

Rising in status: Leopold, Aesop, and also Mistral.  AI nationalism.  Proponents of slow take-off as the likely scenario.  Reticent, quiet CEOs.  As for China, will they rush into this opportunity, or are they at least as scared as we are?

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/sometimes-it-is-hard-to-solve-for-the-equilibrium.html/feed 72 93199 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/how-did-stanislaw-lem-imagine-advanced-computer-intelligence.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-did-stanislaw-lem-imagine-advanced-computer-intelligence How did Stanislaw Lem imagine advanced computer intelligence? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/958003598/0/marginalrevolution~How-did-Stanislaw-Lem-imagine-advanced-computer-intelligence.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/06/how-did-stanislaw-lem-imagine-advanced-computer-intelligence.html#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2026 07:22:02 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93163 …GOLEM’s behavior is unpredictable.  Sometimes it converses courteously with people, whereas on other occasions any attempt at contact misfires.  GOLEM sometimes cracks jokes, too, though its sense of humor is fundamentally different from man’s.  Much depends on its interlocutors.  In exceptional casese GOLEM will show a certain interest in people who are talented in a […]

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…GOLEM’s behavior is unpredictable.  Sometimes it converses courteously with people, whereas on other occasions any attempt at contact misfires.  GOLEM sometimes cracks jokes, too, though its sense of humor is fundamentally different from man’s.  Much depends on its interlocutors.  In exceptional casese GOLEM will show a certain interest in people who are talented in a particular way; it is intrigued, so to speak, not by mathematical aptitude — not even the greatest — but rather by interdisciplinary forms of talent; on several occasions it has predicted with uncanny accuracy achievements by young, as yet unknown, scientists in a field which it has it self indicated.  (After a brief exchange it informed T. Vroedel, age twenty-two and then only a doctoral candidate, “You will become a computer,” which was supposed to mean, more o less, “You will become somebody.”)

That is from Lem’s Imaginary Magnitude, an extraordinary book in parts, most of all see his Golem IV section on how n AGI (our term, not his) is likely to behave.

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