Owen Davis

@AlexYablon Wendy is so good

Listening to the new Wendy Eisenberg and wishing I’d paid more attention when learning music theory

Fake it till you make it!

Some wild details in this NYT story on what is kind of sort of the first one-person billion-dollar company, a middleman for GLP-1s. Puprortedly $20k in AI token costs to get to 9-digit revenue.

Can Claude lol?

Possible AI usage metric: share of github commits with comments including "lol", "lmao" and suchlike

@rick_carp yes exactly! so the real problem goes back to photoshop...

AI reduces the cost of making convincing fakes. Does that increase or reduce the number of April Fool's posts? Part of the point seems to be eliciting a reaction of "boy you went to all this trouble huh." Which AI kind of spoils.

This is one of the most important facts to understand wage growth for low wage workers in the US last fifty years imo

Extremely impressive and inspiring writeup. Someone with no technical background talking about building an LLM that talks like something out of a Victorian-era novel for less than $500.

We completed the most comprehensive study of how economists and AI experts think AI will affect the U.S. economy. They predict major AI progress—but no dramatic break from economic trends: GDP growth rates similar to today's and a moderate decline in labor force participation. However, when asked to consider what would happen in a world with extremely rapid progress in AI capabilities by 2030, they predict significant economic impacts by 2050: • Annualized GDP growth of 3.5% (compared to 2.4% in 2025) • A labor force participation rate of 55% (roughly 10 million fewer jobs) • 80% of wealth held by the top 10% (highest since 1939) 🧵 Here's what we found:

@tysonbrody Craisgslist exposure is one of the shocks they use here to show local newspaper deaths raise municipal borrowing rates sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Wow, a 2025 study found you could connect Craigslist entering a city with a decline in local newspaper staffing, leading to a decline in politics coverage, which in turn led to a decline in readership, which they connect to more partisan voting and extreme candidates.

working paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2603.03144 wsj: wsj.com/tech/ai/the-pe…

A dispiriting finding in the fascinating new pre-print study on household ChatGPT use (just written up in the Wall Street Journal): increased chatbot usage is associated with decreased news consumption.

In our paper, we use internet browsing data to track when households use ChatGPT - and find that post-ChatGPT online browsing involves more leisure (social, gaming, streaming etc.), and less "productive" activities online (research, job search, shopping etc.)! (3/n)

This morning a NYT story suggested that private credit's weakness might be alleviated by Trump admin's plans to allow 401(k)s into alternative assets. Just now, the DOL released the proposed rules. Q: Are alternative asset purveyors already positioning to market to this segment?

This seems like a big change in a decade, wonder if it's validated elsewhere. Theoretically, information technologies like AI should increase managers' span of control.

Guy I want to meet: NYC transplant who's a Mets fan *because* they’re owned by the founder of Point72 Asset Management