Marcus on AI

AI can only improve if its limits as well as its strengths are faced honestly

I’ve noticed this disappointing transformation in Cowen (I used to respect him, and enjoyed our initial conversations in August and November 2021) over the last three years – more or less since ChatGPT dropped and growing steadily worse over time.

More and more his discussions of AI have become entirely one-sided, often featuring over-the-top instantaneous reports from the front line that don’t bear up over time, like one in February in which he alleged that Deep Research had written “a number of ten-page papers [with[ quality as comparable to having a good PhD-level research assistant” without even acknowledging, for example, the massive problem LLMs have with fabricating citations. (A book that Cowen “wrote” with AI last year is sort of similar; it plenty of attention, as a novelty, but I don’t the ideas in it had any lasting impact on economics, whatsoever.)