Geoff Swier

Economics, farrierswier Consulting. Energy market transition.

[Antonello Guerrera @antoguerrera]

BREAKING. All hell breaks loose between Donald Trump and Giorgia Meloni. 🇮🇹 🇺🇸

Trump told La7 tv that apparently “Meloni begged to have a picture with me at the G7, I felt sorry for her”.

Meloni’s scathing response: “I am shocked by Trump’s utterly fabricated words. I am sorry he doesn’t show the same determination against the enemies of the West. And bear in mind: me and Italy never beg”.

What a time to be alive.

[Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @lugaricano]

Delighted to tell you that Messy Jobs is coming out on June 21st. The kindle preorder link is available!

Here are advance reviews/blurbs for you to ponder by @raffasadun @davidautor @patrickc @alexolegimas @bengtmit and Evan Guo.

"Messy Jobs is a brilliant application of price theory. AI changes what is scarce in the economy and therefore what is valuable. When intelligence becomes cheap, judgment, coordination, trust, and responsibility become more valuable. The authors use this simple, powerful logic to illuminate how AI will reshape work and organizations." Bengt Holmström, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at MIT and recipient of the 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

"In Messy Jobs, Garicano, Li, and Wu bring the discipline of organizational economics to a question too often left to speculation: How will AI actually reshape work? They move past the usual debates about what AI can or cannot do and ask the harder questions. What shapes the incentives to adopt it? How does adoption reshape the incentives to learn? What new configuration of skills will emerge as AI advances? A rigorous, original, and engaging account of how AI will reshape organizations and labor markets, and what it will take to thrive in them." - Raffaella Sadun, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

"This is the first book in the AI era that recognizes that most of what organizations struggle with does not involve computational problems. People in messy jobs must hold coalitions together, adjudicate between competing interests, and make change stick. These are political, diplomatic, and interpersonal challenges. As a result, these types of messy jobs will persist well into our AI future. Garicano, Li, and Wu, are neither techno-utopian nor techno-dystopian. They take seriously what machines can do, what humans will do, and how jobs will be rebundled. The economics analysis is lucid and penetrating, and the book pinpoints where human agency will remain paramount. The book is hopeful and practical for anyone charting a career in the coming decade." - David Autor, Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor, Google Technology and Society Visiting Fellow, Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, MIT Department of Economics

"This is simply a must-read book if you are interested in the future of work in the age of AI. For decades, Luis Garicano has been a leading voice in how organizations morph and change with new technology and innovation. Together with Jin Li and Yanhui Wu, they have written the definitive text on how AI will affect the labor market. The book is an impressive feat of combining academic rigor with clear explanations and concrete examples. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about what comes next. "- Alex Imas, director of AGI Economics, Google DeepMind, and the Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Professor of Behavioral Science, Economics, and Applied AI, and Vasilou Faculty Scholar at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business

"There is a lot of woolly thinking on the topic of AI and jobs. This excellent book contains by far the most thoughtful and economically literate account that has yet been written." - Patrick Collison, CEO, Stripe

"AI is not going to lead to mass unemployment, and this is the best book to explain why not. It also illuminates how labor markets are likely to evolve. It is short, to the point, eminently readable, and of extreme relevance. ""- Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University

"This book isn't just some economist's armchair theorizing; it's a practical guide. I hope you get as much out of it as I did. "-- Evan Guo, CEO of Zhaopin Group, the largest career development platform in China
https://t.co/L7UM3bHHYO

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@robin_j_brooks

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@TheStalwart Experts still don’t fully comprehend how the Human brain works, it’s that complex, so until they do (if ever) then Human - AI comparisons are hypothetical.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@DavidSacks Agree that government ownership of the AI companies is a bad idea. Finding a way for certain individual retirement funds…say doe kids under 18…to be gifted AI company shares might not be a bad idea.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@JosephNWalker @joewalkerpod 2/ So we may see more transformational change - new AI paradigms (eg World models); more efficient chips: new algorithms and AI techniques, new use cases (who knew about Mythos 3 months ago). etc etc

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@JosephNWalker @joewalkerpod Interesting show. However may be extrapolating too much from the current technology and industry structure? The massive money and talent that is flooding into this space is still very recent, arguably only 3 1/2 years.

[Sky News @SkyNews]

"What I discovered is that state-sanctioned actors heavily utilise cryptocurrency to launder their funds."

The youngest person to ever be sanctioned by Russia, 17-year-old Alexander Browder, tells Sky's @jonathansamuels about what exactly he exposed

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@Robert_A_Berger @OpenAI @AnthropicAI @Gemini @grok

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@alexolegimas @dwarkesh_sp @pawtrammell Agree with your point about the difficulty in forecasting the future and the value of scenario analysis. In addition to identifying data, it would also be useful to help prioritise and communicate the policy agenda topics that are relevant to each scenario.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@VizierPrime @dwarkesh_sp I think this is correct. Which is why we may see a continued trend (except the US perhaps) towards less time spent through a lifetime in paid labour - shorter working weeks, longer time in education and training, longer retirement, more volunteering.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@dwarkesh_sp Great discussion. I (and others probably) would appreciate a reading list of, say the top 10 papers or books that are would provide more background to this discussion. @alexolegimas

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@MayneReport Not quite. There are ESG based ETFs. Alphinity for example. I haven’t looked at whether SpaceX’s governance arrangements breaches the Governance principle used by these or other funds.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@marcportermagee @Noahpinion The wage premium for college grads is still pretty attractive…isn’t the costs of college the problem.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@Davis_TheMann @paulg The good old ask a Taxi driver test would validate this result. Our Athens Taxi driver made us want to be taken back to the airport.

[Davis @Davis_TheMann]

@paulg Most people in the US think the country's morals and ethics are bad.

In a couple of weeks we will get an updated survey on what the rest of the world thinks of the US.
(It won't be good.)

[Andrew Curran @AndrewCurran_]

In a new Stanford study, law professors by far preferred Gemini 2.5 Pro's responses over those written by their peers when they were unaware of who wrote the answers.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@niccruzpatane Noting some of the sceptical comments below it surely will, in time lead to an industry wide trend. Much of this additional tech seems interesting but not super compelling, but turning it into real financial benefit is a game changer.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@shorewalker1 Reminds me of my 5th form Biology teacher, (I’m 15 yo BTW) teaching Karl Popper and the Scientific method.

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@sebkrier …or maybe the investment currently going into LLMs will turn out to be disproportionately excessive vs the potential value of investment. in these other areas and there will be a correction

[Geoff Swier @GeoffSwier]

@sebkrier One aspect you don’t mention is the potential for AI to assist in making important discoveries in Medicine, Physics, Materials science etc (à la Alpha Fold). Perhaps there are important things happening in Labs that generalists haven’t heard about.