#theeconomist (25 links)
- Weil’s collapse and the death of corporate loyalty economist.com
On the breakdown of the partnership model in law firms.
Weil is the first great law firm to suffer the death of elite collectivism. It is unlikely to be the last. That is because it is hard to say what Weil might have done differently, and what exactly marked it out for ruin. The result is disorienting: an industry of hundred-year-old stalwarts, any one of which could at any time suffer a debilitating run if the wrong lawyer defects. The partnership structure, once an instrument of stability, is now a liability. Paying an individual anything other than the fees he commands from clients is not an incentive to collegiality, but an invitation to leave. The names on the door are not an indication of shared values, but the dignified parts of an increasingly efficient corporate constitution. Loyalty counts for little; history, nothing at all.
- Don’t let AI kill the author economist.com
- What AI has in common with dogs economist.com
Back when dog technology was first being developed, it was far from obvious that it was safe for people—who were literally inviting wolves into their caves. They had to train them not to eat babies. Thousands of years later, dogs still sometimes escape and go rogue. But overall, people are happy with how things have worked out. (It did not end so well for the Neanderthals.)
Great analogy.
Humanity spent two centuries fitting those systems with partial controls. In the case of corporations, those controls include independent boards of directors, shareholder votes, courts, disclosure rules and regulators, not to mention public disapproval and consequent activism. Each was a feedback loop, a way to correct the system when its objectives drove it somewhere monstrous. Mr Musk is removing those loops one at a time.
- How to spot AI writing economist.com
Large language models like long words and em-dashes—or do they?
- Franchising has quietly made countless Americans rich economist.com
Incentive parallels with consulting.
The bet is that discovery won’t start on homepages or even in search boxes, but with AI intermediaries acting on a user’s behalf. As Josh Muncke, vp of generative AI at The Economist Group, told Digiday, the publisher is preparing for “a world with two versions of the web” — one optimized for rich, human reading experiences, and another where “agents want clear structure, questions and answers, ideally text,” not carousels and feature art.
Also...
In areas that touch reader experience, editorial staff are embedded directly in those pods to ensure AI-powered features still “retain the look, feel, style, tone of The Economist,” per Muncke.
- A plan for Europe’s tech fightback economist.com
As American and Chinese technology becomes more deeply embedded, there is much talk in Europe’s capitals about the importance of tech sovereignty. But the truth is no European country, including Britain, is big enough to stand on its own feet across the full range of ai-related technologies. The tech supremacy of America and China is in large part a function of their hemispheric scale. European nations will need to learn to act at hemispheric scale themselves if they want to compete.
- Interview: Bret Taylor of Sierra and OpenAI economist.com
Andrew Palmer discusses the potential and limits of AI agents with the co-founder of Sierra, an agentic customer-service company. Bret Taylor, who is also the chairman of OpenAI, tells Andrew Palmer about the imperfections of the technology, the competition between model-makers and vendors, and how he uses AI to manage.
- How much happiness does money buy? economist.com
Armed with little more than the principles behind them and some maths that has been solved for half a century, you can build an entire theory of how to invest your hard-earned savings. It tells you how much you should risk on the stockmarket, how much you should keep safe and what you can spend in retirement. It requires just a few facts about financial markets and some of the simplest, cheapest investment funds that asset managers offer. What is more, it was first formulated by a Nobel-prizewinning economist and is today almost universally accepted by his successors as the “correct” approach to investment and spending. Yet outside academia, almost no one has heard of it.
- Why has The Economist changed its typeface? economist.com
Keen-eyed readers will have noticed that our website, app and print edition look different
- What the softening of the Sun says about Britain economist.com
It is this “two-speed liberalisation”, a term coined by Mark Pack, a Liberal Democrat bigwig, that helps explains Britain’s culture wars. It may seem as though the combatants are pulling in opposite directions. But it is better to think of a camel train in the desert: arguments break out when those at the front of the caravan pull ahead of the stragglers.
- Letters to the editor | Jan 27th 2024 Edition economist.com
There are real issues to be addressed: companies do need more diversity of perspective and underrepresented groups do need more opportunities. But organisations must rethink their methods by drawing more on social science and less on social activism. No amount of social idealism will rewire millions of years of neural evolution.
- The growing peril of national conservatism economist.com
Liberalism’s great strength is that it is adaptable. The abolitionist and feminist movements broke apart the idea that some people counted more than others. Socialist arguments about fairness and human dignity helped create the welfare state. Libertarian arguments about liberty and efficiency led to freer markets and a limit on state power. Liberalism can adapt to national conservatism, too. Right now, it is falling behind.
They aren’t making sites easier to use, but some people are profiting Image: Tomasz Woźniakowski Aug 31st 2023|NEW YORK Bill Dengler is trying to become an…
- Why investors should forget about delayed gratification economist.com
Distant profits are worth less and less these days Sep 15th 2022 This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit the full collection for book lists,…
By treating some digital services as public infrastructure, countries from tiny Estonia to giants such as India and Brazil are reimagining what sovereignty and state capacity could look like in a world of bits and bytes.
- A Lego-lover’s guide to preparing for the AI age economist.com
In a recent McKinsey survey, they say, about 90% of companies had some kind of digital strategy, but they captured less than a third of the revenue gains they had anticipated. Moreover, the success rate is more uneven within industries than it is between them. The best retailer may be more digitally productive than an average high-tech firm, and the worst retailer may be as bad as the worst government entity.
- The Economist - How to write well youtube.com
Our journalists discuss how to communicate with clarity, style and precision
- The alternatives to privatisation and nationalisation economist.com
I T SOUNDS VAGUELY elvish, like something from the pages of Tolkien. In fact, the Charter of the Forest is one of Britain’s founding political documents, dating…
- Reflections of a business guru - Bartleby economist.com
C HARLES HANDY has been through a lot of challenges in a long career as a manager at Royal Dutch Shell, an oil giant, followed by a spell in academia and…
- The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising » Nieman Journalism Lab niemanlab.org
The Economist has taken the view that advertising is nice, and we’ll certainly take money where we can get it, but we’re pretty much expecting it to go away.
Via tomtaylor.
"For all its wit, "Hooligan"—written at a time of really horrible racial tension in Britain—had a serious purpose: to urge readers in 1982 to avoid moral panic and a rush to historically-illiterate judgement. Its lessons hold just as true today."
Via blech.
This suggests that success in manufacturing will depend less on scale and more on the quality of ideas. Brilliance alone, though, will not be enough. Good ideas can be copied even more rapidly with 3D printing, so battles over intellectual property may become even more intense. It will be easier for imitators as well as innovators to get goods to market fast. Competitive advantages may thus be shorter-lived than ever before. As with past industrial revolutions, the greatest beneficiaries may not be companies but their customers.
In the longer term the odds are stacked against secrecy, particularly in countries that practise openness in other areas. One reason is that though individual jurisdictions often prevent a specific libel, privacy breach or copyright infringement, a story with a global reach will get out somewhere. Short of imposing Chinese-style firewalls and censorship, free countries cannot consistently stop their citizens finding out what their enemies tell them, including tales of the shadowy, sordid or sensational deeds done in their names.