Friday, October 30, 2020

Can computers write poetry? Could they replace poets?

See Was This Poem Written by a Computer or Human? Put your bot-sniffing skills to the test, and see how you do by Hailey Reissman. Excerpts:

"In 2013, Australian grad student Oscar Schwartz and his friend Benjamin Laird created a website called bot or not. On the site, you’re presented with a poem and you have to guess whether it was written by a human or computer."

"some poems in the bot or not database have fooled 65 percent of human readers"

The article has some examples of poems by both humans and computers and you can test yourself.

In my macroeconomics class, we talk about the types of unemployment. Here is one of them:

Structural-unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills of job seekers and the requirements of available jobs. One example of this is when you are replaced by a machine.

Related posts:

Will computer programs replace newspaper columnists?  

McDonald’s Tests Robot Fryers and Voice-Activated Drive-Throughs: Burger giant wants to speed service as competition for fast-food diners mounts

Is Walmart adding robots to replace workers or because it is hard to find workers?

Robot Journalists-A Case Of Structural Unemployment?

Structural Unemployment In The News-Computers Can Now Tell Jokes 

WHAT do you get when you cross a fragrance with an actor?

Answer: a smell Gibson.

Robot jockeys in camel races

Are Computer Programs Replacing Journalists?

Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs 

The Robots Are Coming And It Might Not Be A Case of Structural Unemployment 

Broncos to debut beer-pouring robot at upcoming game

Robots Are Ready to Shake (and Stir) Up Bars    

Friday, October 23, 2020

How Odysseus Started The Industrial Revolution

Factory work may have been a commitment device to get everyone to work hard. Odysseus tying himself to the mast was also a commitment device. Dean Karlan, Yale economics professor explains how commitment devices work:

"This idea of forcing one’s own future behavior dates back in our culture at least to Odysseus, who had his crew tie him to the ship’s mast so he wouldn’t be tempted by the sirens; and Cortes, who burned his ships to show his army that there would be no going back.

Economists call this method of pushing your future self into some behavior a “commitment device.” [Related: a Freakonomics podcast on the topic is called "Save Me From Myself."] From my WSJ op-ed:
Most of us don’t have crews and soldiers at our disposal, but many people still find ways to influence their future selves. Some compulsive shoppers will freeze their credit cards in blocks of ice to make sure they can’t get at them too readily when tempted. Some who are particularly prone to the siren song of their pillows in the morning place their alarm clock far from their bed, on the other side of the room, forcing their future self out of bed to shut it off. When MIT graduate student Guri Nanda developed an alarm clock, Clocky, that rolls off a night stand and hides when it goes off, the market beat a path to her door."
 See What Can We Learn From Congress and African Farmers About Losing Weight?

Something like this came up recently in the New York Times, in reference to factory work and the Industrial Revolution. See Looking at Productivity as a State of Mind. From the NY Times, 9-27-2014. By SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN, a professor of economics at Harvard. Excerpts:
"Greg Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, has gone so far as to argue that the Industrial Revolution was in part a self-control revolution. Many economists, beginning with Adam Smith, have argued that factories — an important innovation of the Industrial Revolution — blossomed because they allowed workers to specialize and be more productive.

Professor Clark argues that work rules truly differentiated the factory. People working at home could start and finish when they wanted, a very appealing sort of flexibility, but it had a major drawback, he said. People ended up doing less work that way.

Factories imposed discipline. They enforced strict work hours. There were rules for when you could go home and for when you had to show up at the beginning of your shift. If you arrived late you could be locked out for the day. For workers being paid piece rates, this certainly got them up and at work on time. You can even see something similar with the assembly line. Those operations dictate a certain pace of work. Like a running partner, an assembly line enforces a certain speed.

As Professor Clark provocatively puts it: “Workers effectively hired capitalists to make them work harder. They lacked the self-control to achieve higher earnings on their own.”

The data entry workers in our study, centuries later, might have agreed with that statement. In fact, 73 percent of them did agree to this statement: “It would be good if there were rules against being absent because it would help me come to work more often.”"
The workers, like Odyssues, tied themselves to the mast to resist the temptation of slacking. This made it possible for factories to generate the large output of the Industrial Revolution.

Friday, October 16, 2020

Studying Economics Increases Wages a Lot

By Alex Tabarrok. He is an economics professor at George Mason university.

He discusses the key issue, causality. Does majoring in economics cause the higher salary? Or did smart people major in economics who would have made high salaries anyway?

The study looked at students who just barely had a high enough GPA to qualify to major in econ and compared them to students who were just below the cutoff. So the two groups are very similar (meaning we have ceteris paribus conditions or holding all other factors constant).

Here is the post from Dr. Tabarrok. The link he has at the end is also very interesting.

"Students who majored in economics earned median wages at the age of forty of $90,000 in 2018. Students who majored in other social sciences earned only $65,000. Why the big difference? Selection or a causal effect of earnings? Zachary Bleemer and Aashish Mehta compare students at UCSC who just missed the grade cutoff to be able to major in economics with those who just made the grade. Making the grade causes a big increase in students choosing to major in economics and a big increase in their salaries by their mid-20s of about $22,000. Thus most or all of the observed differences in salaries by major appear to be causal. The increase in salary appears to be driven by a change in preferences that leads students with economics majors to specialize in high-wage industries.

Abstract: We investigate the wage return to studying economics by leveraging a policy that prevented students with low introductory grades from declaring the major. Students who barely met the GPA threshold to major in economics earned $22,000 (46%) higher annual early-career wages than they would have with their second-choice majors. Access to the economics major shifts students’ preferences toward business/finance careers, and about half of the wage return is explained by economics majors working in higher-paying industries. The causal return to majoring in economics is very similar to observational earnings differences in nationally representative data.

As I have written, College Majors Matter and by about as much as going to college!"

See also from Feb. of this year 33 of the Highest-Paying Majors You Can Choose in College.

Relate posts:

What College Majors Pay The Highest?

50 College Majors With the Best Return on Investment

Friday, October 09, 2020

When workers were paid twice a day and given half-hour shopping breaks (Germany, 1923)

 Here is Michael K. Salemi on hyper inflation. He is an economics professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

"Inflation is a sustained increase in the aggregate price level. Hyperinflation is very high inflation. Although the threshold is arbitrary, economists generally reserve the term “hyperinflation” to describe episodes when the monthly inflation rate is greater than 50 percent. At a monthly rate of 50 percent, an item that cost $1 on January 1 would cost $130 on January 1 of the following year.
Hyperinflation is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. The most widely studied hyperinflation occurred in Germany after World War I. The ratio of the German price index in November 1923 to the price index in August 1922—just fifteen months earlier—was 1.02 × 1010. This huge number amounts to a monthly inflation rate of 322 percent. On average, prices quadrupled each month during the sixteen months of hyperinflation."
1.02 × 1010 means 10,200,000,000. So something that cost one Mark ended up costing 10,200,000,000 Marks 15 months later.

Here are some of the unusual things people did to cope.

See Igniting The Holocaust - Facing History and Ourselves: Burning Money: Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic.
"By the fall of 1923, workers were paid twice a day.  After each pay they were given time off to go shopping, so that prices wouldn't rise any further.  At the height of hyperinflation, just buying the day's food could cost trillions of German marks; people had to shop with backpacks and wheelbarrows to be able to carry their money -- and many people who had been managing just fine found themselves starving."
See Hyperinflation by John D. Clare.
"As soon as the factory gates opened and the workers streamed out, pay packets (often in old cigar boxes) in their hands, a kind of relay race began: the wives grabbed the money, rushed to the nearest shops, and bought food before prices went up again. Salaries always lagged behind, the employees on monthly pay were worse off than workers on weekly. People living on fixed incomes sank into deeper and deeper poverty.

       A familiar sight in the streets were handcarts and laundry baskets full of paper money, being pushed or carried to or from the banks. It sometimes happened that thieves stole the baskets but tipped out the money and left it on the spot. There was dry joke that spread through Germany: papering one's WC with banknotes. Some people made kites for their kids out  them.

Egon Larsen, a German journalist, remembering in 1976"
See German hyperinflation: Loads of money from The Economist.
"The hyperinflation and widespread unemployment in Germany in the 1920s was not something we can relate to from our own experiences, but you can see from the passage below how it would wreck an economy and a society and set the stage for the rise of a fanatic promising a better future. 'FOR these ten marks I sold my virtue,' were the words a Berliner noticed written on a banknote in 1923. He was buying a box of matches, all the note was worth by then. That was in the early days. By November 5th, a loaf of bread cost 140 billion marks. Workers were paid twice a day, and given half-hour breaks to rush to the shops with their satchels, suitcases or wheelbarrow, to buy something, anything, before their paper money halved in value yet again."
See Children playing with stacks of hyperinflated currency during the Weimar Republic, 1922 from Rare Historical Photos.
"By mid-1923 workers were being paid as often as three times a day. Their wives would meet them, take the money and rush to the shops to exchange it for goods. However, by this time, more and more often, shops were empty. Storekeepers could not obtain goods or could not do business fast enough to protect their cash receipts. Farmers refused to bring produce into the city in return for worthless paper. The requirements to calculate and recalculate commercial transactions in the billions and trillions made it practically impossible to do business in paper Marks.

Millions of middle-class Germans, normally the mainstay of a republic, were ruined by the inflation. They became receptive to rabid right wing propaganda and formed a fertile soil for Hitler. Workers who had suffered through the inflation turned, in many cases, to the Communists."

Related post:

World War I Finally Ends (a post from 2010 when Germany made the last payment for war reparations from World War I in 2010 that may have contributed to the hyper inflation)

Friday, October 02, 2020

Is Covid causing some structural unemployment?

See Companies Step Up Distribution Automation Under Pandemic Strains: Robots are helping speed the flow of goods while workers maintain social distance in warehousing and fulfillment operations by Jennifer Smith of The WSJ. 

In my macroeconomics class, we talk about the types of unemployment. Here is one of them:

Structural-unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills of job seekers and the requirements of available jobs. One example of this is when you are replaced by a machine.

Excerpts from the article:

"A handful of warehouse robots helped American Eagle Outfitters Inc. cope with a flood of online orders during coronavirus lockdowns as consumers loaded digital shopping carts with hoodies, leggings and loungewear.

Now the company is stepping up its use of automation. The company is installing 26 more piece-picking robots at its main U.S. distribution centers, making it the latest company to deepen its logistics technology investments as the coronavirus pandemic upends sales channels and supply chains.

The kiosk-size units from robotics provider Kindred Systems Inc. use mechanical arms, computer vision and artificial intelligence to sort through piles of apparel. They provide steady labor to help workers organize orders and reduce crowding on the warehouse floor, where the company said one human can manage multiple robots instead of standing next to other associates."

One executive said "You cannot actually bring in 1,000 to 2,000 untrained people into the distribution facility and maintain safe working conditions."

"More than half of warehouse operators responding to a recent survey by Honeywell Intelligrated, Honeywell International Inc.’s warehouse automation business, said they were more willing to invest in automation as a result of the pandemic."

Related posts:

Can computers write poetry? Could they replace poets?

Will computer programs replace newspaper columnists?  

McDonald’s Tests Robot Fryers and Voice-Activated Drive-Throughs: Burger giant wants to speed service as competition for fast-food diners mounts

Is Walmart adding robots to replace workers or because it is hard to find workers?

Robot Journalists-A Case Of Structural Unemployment?

Structural Unemployment In The News-Computers Can Now Tell Jokes 

WHAT do you get when you cross a fragrance with an actor?

Answer: a smell Gibson.

Robot jockeys in camel races

Are Computer Programs Replacing Journalists?

Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs 

The Robots Are Coming And It Might Not Be A Case of Structural Unemployment 

Broncos to debut beer-pouring robot at upcoming game

Robots Are Ready to Shake (and Stir) Up Bars