Interconnectedness between: growth and diverse leading indicators; climate change and far right politics; MBS’s sporting and geopolitical ambitions for Saudi Arabia. The challenges facing ChatGDP. Neom not everyone’s idea of Utopia.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Wilfred Chan, Lipstick sales, packed lunches, strippers’ tips: the unlikely signs of recession
(The Guardian, 6 February 2023)
At a time when all economists are pondering whether there’ll be a recession in the US anytime soon, this article reminds us that some of the best leading indicators are to be found in the most unlikely corners, like: strip clubs, lipstick sales, men’s underwear, or the performance of online dating apps. Based on some of these, the upcoming recession may be further away than we think, in the light of a seemingly remarkable turnaround that just took place in January (free access – reads in 5-6 min).
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Ricci Shryock, Climate ripples and the rise of the right
(NPR, 6 February 2023)
This interactive video is about interconnectedness between macro issues (climate change, migration, and the ascendance of the far right). It shows that when the seas rise in Senegal, so do the fortunes of far-right political parties in Europe. As climate change warms the planet, the pressure on people to leave their homes is increasing for those who are already struggling to survive. And where migrants see hope of a better future, far-right politicians see both a threat and an opportunity (free access – about 10 min to watch).
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Ali Walker, The secret Saudi plan to buy the World Cup
(Politico, 7 February 2023)
A perfect example of how the worlds of sport and geopolitics increasingly intersect. Crown Prince MBS privately promised to pay for all Greece’s infrastructure, in exchange for Athens signing up to the joint 2030 bid. Holding the World Cup would be the culmination of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious strategy to dominate major sporting events, but its desire to stage the World Cup goes beyond reasons of sporting prestige. In the words of one expert, the Kingdom “is strategically trying to position itself as an Afro-Eurasian hub — the center of a new world order” (free access, reads in 4-5 min).
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Will Knight, The Race to Build a ChatGPT-Powered Search Engine
(Wired, 6 February 2023)
There is a lot of excitement around ChatGPT and the hope that it could reinvent search engines. The chatbot does provide complex and sophisticated answers to all sorts of questions by synthesizing information found in the billions of words scraped from the web and other sources to train its algorithms. However, the way it works is also at odds with the idea of a search engine that reliably retrieves information found online: there’s plenty of inaccurate information on the web already, but ChatGPT readily generates fresh falsehoods. Technical problems are monumental, and this article does a good job at explaining how they might be overcome and where they might lead (metered paywall – reads in 7-9 min).
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Deyan Sudjic, Welcome to Neom, Saudi Arabia’s desert dystopia in the making
(Prospect Magazine, 25 January 2023)
Neom’s project (a futuristic city in Saudi Arabia’s desert founded on a 170km-long line of mirrored towers) is attracting admiration and loathing in equal measure. This article’s author – an architect and designer – belongs to the latter camp. As Western architects scramble to work on the Saudi Arabian dream, he argues that it will end up as a series of broken pieces (metered paywall – reads in 6-8 min).
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