Rising inequality – a danger to democracy. Vance as VP will implement the MAGA project 2025 to the letter. How China is remodelling itself as a tech, green giant. Open AI coming close to being able to reason like us. A list to indulge in – 100 best books of the 21st Century.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.” (Novelist Jonathan Franzen in the last article)
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Susan Stokes, Inequality Spurs Democratic Backsliding
(Project Syndicate, 11 July 2024)
This is not a slogan, but the outcome of new academic research undertaken at the University of Chicago which shows a correlation between high levels of income and wealth inequality and an increase in the risk of democratic backsliding. The research paper (available HERE), proving that inequality is the key factor – national income (GDP per capita) has a smaller effect, while a democracy’s age and the strength of its public institutions have no discernible influence. To mitigate the risk of democratic erosion, governments need, as we regularly advocate in the Monthly Barometer, to create a fairer economy (metered paywall that may require prior registration, reads in 6-8 min).
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Dan Pfeiffer, Trump Picked Vance to Make Project 2025 a Reality
(Message Box News, 15 July 2024)
Obama’s former senior advisor explains the rationale behind picking JD Vance as his vice-president candidate. Disturbing to say the least. The most prominent “Never Trumpers” (in 2016) who once called Trump “America’s Hitler” has undergone his Damascene conversion and is now more extreme than Trump on many issues, ranging from abortion to Ukraine. Put simply, “Vance is on the ticket to implement the MAGA agenda”, the reason why so many people behind Project 2025 supported his appointment. The obvious conclusion: “Project 2025 is a very real threat if Trump wins. And Vance will implement it with ruthless efficiency” (free access, reads in 6-7 min).
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David Rovella, China Is Remaking Itself into a Tech Behemoth
(Bloomberg, 18 July 2024)
This short documentary explores Xi Jinping’s long-term plan to turbocharge the nation’s technological prowess. China has invested considerable capital to transform its famous “factory floor” industrial economy into one dominated by, among other things, the clean technology that will eventually power a post-fossil fuel world (gifted article with the video within it, 8 minutes).
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Scott Rosenberg, OpenAI nears “reasoning”-capable AI
(Axios, 15 July 2024)
OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and other key competitors are spending billions to “get to” AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). This short piece describes how OpenAI defines what it means by the vague term of AGI, and how it aims at developing AI that can reason at a human level, plan ahead, work out problems with multiple steps and independently perform “deep research” (free access, reads in 3 min).
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The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
(The New York Times)
A gem and an unending source of pleasure and interest. In collaboration with the Upshot, The New York Times sent a survey to 503 literary luminaries (novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers), asking them to name the 10 best books published since Jan. 1, 2000.This is their response, ranked from bottom to top, with a short summary and comment for each (gifted article, reads in as long as you wish).
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