Vol. 4, No. 7 — The human touch
Artificial intelligence won't replace creatives; The good side of financial bubbles; Trump Media is an overvalued load of SPAC; Traders are incredibly optimistic; Value in electric cars
🌐 Keeping on top of the news can take ages, and most media outlets are biased. 𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑎𝑏𝑙 built a free website to help you catch up quickly on the news that matters. Theglobeataglance.com finds the most important news stories every six hours and summarises them without bias.
⏳ Read time: 44 minutes
In this issue
💬 Quote | Isaac Asimov
✍🏻 Cartoon | The robots are coming
🤖 Economics | The human touch
🫧 Economics | The upshot of bubbles
📱 Finance | The bigly Truth
🤪 Markets | Traders are optimistic
🚗 Investment idea | Value in electric cars
💬 Quote | Isaac Asimov
“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
✍🏻 Cartoon | The robots are coming
🤖 Economics | The robots aren’t coming
The human touch
Artificial intelligence will not replace creatives. It will make them more valuable. Here’s why
Artificial intelligence has people on edge. Some folks think it’ll take over the world and enslave us. Others think it’ll liberate us from the drudgery of work—a new Renaissance. But, as with most things, the likely outcome is somewhere in between. Clever computers will make us more productive. And they’ll eliminate much of the introductory grunt work that interns and new recruits do. Law firms, for example, won’t need to hire many new graduates to sift through precedents. Medical offices won’t need as many doctors as machines will do diagnostics faster, cheaper, and more accurately.
Few people are more worried than creatives. Painters, writers, and musicians alike are scared that robots are coming for their jobs. However, if they’re good, they needn’t worry. Artificial intelligence will make manmade art more valuable. It’ll become more niche and specialised instead of totally replaced. Creative output will become a symbol of luxury.
Computers will make humans more valuable because people love the human touch. And, to be frank, robots are boring. In 1997, Deep Blue, a fancy chess computer, beat Gary Kasparov, the world champion. Since then, chess engines have only improved. The best players in the world have no chance against the best computers. But chess hasn’t declined in popularity. It’s more popular than ever. Chess.com, a famous chess site, gets 11m visitors a day. And, so far this year, people have watched 12m hours of live chess on Twitch, a video streaming site.
People want to interact with other people. No one wants to watch two chess computers grind it out for hours. That’s not impressive. But two humans duking it out is. Similarly, detailed drawings done by desktops may be functional, but they’ll never have the wow factor that human art has.
Throughout history, automation has only made handmade objects more desirable and impressive. Factories churn out millions of machine-made bits of furniture every year. But when interior enthusiasts want something special, they buy a custom-made piece. “Isn’t it a beautiful table? A robot made it in a factory in China,” boasted no one, ever.
Everything was handmade before machines. But when production-line machinery took over, it didn’t eliminate the demand for person-made stuff; it shifted it upmarket. Products became cheaper and more abundant for the masses, while the true artisans became scarcer and more in demand.
Creativity comes from the unexpected. And computers are bl***y sh**house at that. When Homer Simpson sees his ten-year-old son, Bart, welding without a safety mask, he yells, “BART! You can’t weld with such a little flame. Stupid kid.” and walks off. A robot could never come up with such a brilliant piece of comedic sleight of hand. The writers have led us down a corridor and slammed the door in our faces—and we love them for it.
Jokes are funny when they give you a pleasant mental Chinese burn. Paintings are captivating when they shift your perspective. And songs are moving when they massage your nostalgia knots. Robots will make many things cheaper and better. But this will leave the truly creative in more demand, not less. As Rainier Wolfcastle, a Simpsonified Arnold Schwarznegger, says, “I like ze human touch.” ■
🫧 Economics | The good side of financial bubbles
The upshot of bubbles
Financial bubbles get a bad rap. They’re actually perfectly normal and drive innovation
When discussing losing money after the tech bubble popped, Stanley Druckenmiller, a fund manager, said, "I didn't learn anything. I already knew that I wasn't supposed to do that." Mr Druckenmiller had invested $6bn in tech stocks during the boom. Six weeks later, he'd lost half of it and his job.
Stories like this reveal the destructive power of financial bubbles. I covered ten of history's biggest busts in my book, “The Little Book of Big Bubbles”. But economists and investors, including this rag, often only focus on bubbles' downsides. We ignore the upside. While you can lose lots of money investing in a bubble, they hold the potential to rapidly improve our living standards. Bubbles, in fact, are excellent for society because they accelerate competition and innovation. This innovation holds the promise of making us more prosperous and leaving us better off than we would have been otherwise.