Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. What Artificial Intelligence Will Predict

Ben Thompson interviews Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, and explores the next stage of artificial intelligence. Though much of the exchange is dense and technical, Huang makes a clear, persuasive case for how AI will change everything from manufacturing to software, and he outlines AI’s predictive power:

To be able to predict what [you] would want to see, predict what you would want to click on, predict what is useful to you. I’m talking about things that are consumer oriented stuff, but in the future it’ll be able to predict what is the best financial strategy for you, predict what is the best medical therapy for you, predict what is the best health regimen for you, what’s the best vacation plan for you. All of these things are going to be possible with AI.

2. The Future Is Polyester

Cultural historian Virginia Postrel offers an engaging account of polyester, a business that bounced back. Introduced a few decades ago as a miracle fabric, it quickly became associated with bad taste and cheap clothes. Now, “polyester rules the textile world”:

It accounts for more than half of global fiber consumption, about twice that of second-place cotton. Output stands at nearly 58 million tons a year, more than 10 times what it was in the early ’80s. And nobody complains about polyester’s look and feel. If there’s a problem today, it’s that people like polyester too much.

3. Daddy Went Here

Scott Galloway advances an argument made by the Editorial Board in The Harvard Crimson that declares it is “high time to end legacy admissions.” Harvard’s class of 2025 had an acceptance rate of less than 4%, while one-in-three legacy applications were accepted. Galloway goes further, examining admission rates at Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.

Galloway’s short YouTube rant offers more color..

4. YouTube’s Big Payday

MrBeast is the most successful channel on YouTube, with nearly 100 million subscribers. Its content is premised on giving away cash as part of a stunt, dare, or surprise. Rolling Stone profiles the business and its creator, providing an eye-popping look at what drives a modern social media business:

In truth, the main character of MrBeast’s channel is not actually MrBeast himself. It is cold, hard cash. Money — piles, sheaves, gobs of it — takes center stage in nearly all of his videos, proffered as a balm for all of the world’s problems to the gig-economy scrappers and hardworking single moms who star in his videos. In one, he tips a waitress at a hot-dog joint $10,000 for two glasses of water; in another, he gives more than $100,000 to people who lost their jobs in the pandemic. Much of the appeal of MrBeast is predicated on an updated version of the Horatio Alger story; the idea that with a little bit of luck, you too could one day run into MrBeast on the street and walk away thousands of dollars richer.

5. Wimbledon’s War Against Russia

Sports Illustrated takes a hard line against The All England Club’s decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players from this summer’s competition:

This move resets precedent. Wimbledon has essentially said that individual athletes—who may no longer even be residing, much less voting, in their country of nationality—can be punished for acts of that country’s leader. And this is not banning a Russian soccer or biathlon team from competition, nor is it making athletes compete under a neutral flag. This is the banning of independent contractors, none of whom compete with funding from their countries of origin.

Sally Jenkins offers a powerful counterpoint.

6. Dirty Records for ESG Companies

Sanjai Bhagdat, writing in Harvard Business Review, reviews the data for funds and companies that claim strong ESG records. He’s unimpressed:

University of Chicago researchers analyzed the Morningstar sustainability ratings of more than 20,000 mutual funds representing over $8 trillion of investor savings. Although the highest rated funds in terms of sustainability certainly attracted more capital than the lowest rated funds, none of the high sustainability funds outperformed any of the lowest rated funds.

Researchers at Columbia University and London School of Economics compared the ESG record of U.S. companies in 147 ESG fund portfolios and that of U.S. companies in 2,428 non-ESG portfolios. They found that the companies in the ESG portfolios had worse compliance record for both labor and environmental rules.

Websites Worth Reading

Colossal: Art and photography

Retraction Watch: Log of major cases in plagiarism

Google AI Blog: Google’s blog about its AI work

Feeds We Follow

@Ptetlock: Superforecaster

@francis_scarr: Monitoring Russian TV

@TSN_Sportsl: Tribute to the late hockey icon, Guy Lafleur