Some Reading Suggestions For The End Of A Hot Summer

Summer, for me, is a time to relax with family and friends and perhaps catch up on some reading.

This is a hot one, of course—the hottest in recorded history. Yet more evidence (if we needed it) of how we are reshaping our planet. Doomsayers among us cannot agree on whether it will be through climate change, politics, or new technologies—or some combination—that humanity will bring about our own end. I am certainly not sanguine on any of these fronts, but I remain optimistic. I know that we have it in ourselves to solve even our most intractable problems.

On that front, I have been spending a great deal of time educating myself on generative AI. Will it usher in a new productive golden age? Or will it end up destroying jobs and displacing work as we know it? University of Toronto economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb write in Prediction machines: The simple economics of artificial intelligence that AI, like other technologies before it, will