Fortune (August 2)
“Recent college graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.” Some have attributed this to AI and automation, but others like Berkeley economist Brad DeLong believe “larger forces are at work.” He believes “the challenges confronting young job-seekers today are primarily driven by widespread policy uncertainty and a sluggish economy.” Basically, these unlucky “new entrants to the job market are bearing the brunt of the retreat to risk aversion.”
Tags: AI, Automation, Berkeley, Challenges, College graduates, DeLong, Economist, Job markets, Job seekers, Policy uncertainty, Sluggish economy, Toughest
Financial Times (July 28)
“The world was in striking agreement on one point: if Donald Trump went ahead with tariffs, it would strengthen the dollar and trigger stagflation.” It hasn’t, even though the “effective US tariff rate has already risen from 2.5 per cent to 15 per cent.” This outcome is unlikely to upturn conventional tariff wisdom. The U.S. is not “really enjoying a free lunch, taking in $300bn a year in tariff revenues with none of the expected heartburn.” It is much more probable that other factors, like AI’s explosive growth, have hidden the impact. The most likely culprit is “the timeworn mistake of employing simple models…. Complex economies are rarely shaped by just one factor, not even a shock as big as Trump’s tariffs.”
Tags: 15%, Agreement, AI, Complex economies, Conventional wisdom, Dollar, Free lunch, Hidden, Impact, Simple models, Stagflation, Tariffs, Trump, U.S.
WARC (June 13)
“Alphabet, Amazon and Meta dominate the advertising market outside China: they’re set to account for 54.7% of that total in 2025 – equivalent to $524.4bn – rising to 56.2% in 2026. The introduction of AI stands to disrupt some ad revenue models, particularly in search, but Google’s dominance of that market will likely persist in the near term,” according to WARC’s Global Ad Forecast Q2 2025.
Tags: $524.4bn, 2025, 2026, Ad revenue, Advertising market, AI, Alphabet, Amazon, China, Disrupt, Dominance, Dominate, Global Ad Forecast, Google, Market, Meta, Persist
The Economist (May 3)
“Relations between America and China are at a low ebb. Tariffs of well over 100% on both sides have severed trade. Each is striving to dominate 21st-century technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). A massive military build-up is under way. In the previous cold war such rivalries came to a head over flashpoints like the Berlin airlift and the Cuban missile crisis. Today American resolve is likely to be tested over Taiwan—and sooner than many think.”
Tags: AI, Berlin airlift, China, Cold war, Cuban missile crisis, Dominate, Flashpoints, Low ebb, Military build-up, Relations, Resolve, Rivalries, Severed trade, Tariffs, Technologies, Tested, U.S.
Barron’s (March 31)
“AI has yet to cure cancer or drive a car cross-country. But it has upended corporate strategy and spending plans, and opened the door to an age of rapid problem solving, enhanced productivity, and machine-driven creativity.” Still, it’s unclear where AI’s potential leads. “The AI hype cycle has entered a new phase, with investors looking for a payoff. As some of the early enthusiasm fades, tech stocks have entered a correction.”
Tags: AI, Cancer, Car, Corporate strategy, Correction, Creativity, Cure, Enhanced productivity, Enthusiasm, Hype, Investors, Payoff, Potential, Problem solving, Spending plans, Tech stocks, Unclear, Upended
Reuters (March 26)
“Thanks to advances in AI, chips and hardware, the United States and China are now racing to develop humanoid robots that can be deployed in factories, restaurants, hospitals and even households. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently declared that in less than five years, humanoid robots will be widely used in manufacturing.” At the moment, “China has shaky upper hand in battle of the robots” and tremendous motivation to succeed. The country faces a tremendous “labour crunch: in 2021 officials forecasted a shortage of nearly 30 million manufacturing workers by 2025” and this is projected to grow worse as China’s workforce continues to contract.
Tags: AI, Battle, China, Chips, Crunch, Factories, Hardware, Hospitals, Households, Huang, Humanoid, Labour, Manufacturing, Nvidia, Restaurants, Robots, Shortage, U.S.
South China Morning Post (February 24)
“South Korea is lagging behind or matching China in ‘basic competency’ in five areas of semiconductor technology, including memory chips and artificial intelligence (AI) chips, according to a report released last week by the Korea Institute of Science & Technology Evaluation and Planning.” China has now “surpassed South Korea to rank second in memory chip technologies” and “is now only behind the US in this field.” All of this comes despite “US restrictions on the country’s access to advanced chips and chipmaking technologies.”
Tags: Access, Advanced, AI, China, Chips, Competency, Lagging, Memory, Restrictions, Semiconductor technology, South Korea, Surpassed, U.S.
New York Times (January 28)
“Stock futures are looking up after Monday’s markets blood bath, as investors take stock of what the Chinese start-up DeepSeek really means for the artificial intelligence business.” Many questions remain, but “the emerging consensus is that DeepSeek… has upended the race for A.I. supremacy. Apple and Meta might end up being better positioned than initially thought, while Nvidia might not be in a disastrous position.”
Tags: AI, Apple, Blood bath, Consensus, DeepSeek, Investors, Markets, Meta, Nvidia, Start-up, Stock futures, Supremacy, Upended
Financial Times (January 25)
“A small Chinese artificial intelligence lab stunned the world this week by revealing the technical recipe for its cutting-edge model, turning its reclusive leader into a national hero who has defied US attempts to stop China’s high-tech ambitions.” DeepSeek claims to have “used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and $5.6mn to train a model with 671bn parameters, a fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train comparably sized models.” The release of DeepSeek’s R1 model “has Silicon Valley on the defensive, raising doubts “about whether better resourced US AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic, can defend their technical edge.”
Tags: AI, Anthropic, China, Cutting edge, DeepSeek, Defensive, Google, High-tech, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, R1 model, Silicon Valley, Stunned, Technical recipe, U.S.
Institutional Investor (December 16)
“A cross examination of forecasts from asset managers shows that artificial intelligence will be front and center for investors…. Putting geopolitics and economic forecasting to one side for a second,” AI is the “one thematic priority that sticks out.” Artificial intelligence is “being touted as a structural game changer for all industries the likes of which we haven’t seen since the invention of the internet, massively improving efficiency and productivity for those that are able to effectively harness it.”
Tags: AI, Asset managers, Cross examination, Economic forecasting, Efficiency, Forecasts, Game changer, Geopolitics, Internet, Investors, Productivity
