Archive
Academic Article
Large AI models are cultural and social technologies
Large AI models are cultural and social technologies Implications draw on the history of transformative information systems from the past By Henry Farrell, Alison Gopnik, ...
Read More
Interview
The Silicon Valley canon and malformed publics: Podcast with Max Read and John Ganz
Bringing this all together, the technologies through which we see the public shape how we understand it, making it more likely that we end up in ...
Read More
Essay
Silicon Valley’s Reading List Reveals Its Political Ambitions
In 2008, Paul Graham mused about the cultural differences between great US cities. Three years earlier, Graham had co-founded Y Combinator, a “startup accelerator” that would come ...
Read More
Essay
This Is How Trump Will Smash the Machine of U.S. Economic Power
Economic security officials worked across administrations, gradually developing grand ambitions of a global order founded on financial sanctions, export controls and development of crucial technologies. ...
Read More
Academic Article
AI as Governance
Henry Farrell, “AI as Governance,” Annual Review of Political Science, forthcoming.
Read More
Essay
America Should Think Twice Before Replacing Sanctions with Tariffs – with Abraham Newman
Donald Trump complains that they are undermining the supremacy of the dollar. Access the full article here. Henry Farrell (and Abraham Newman), “America Should Think ...
Read More
Essay
Large Language Models Will Upend Human Rituals – with Marion Fourcade
ARTHUR C. CLARKE wrote a story in which the entire universe was created so that monks could ritually write out the nine billion names of ...
Read More
Essay
No Exit Opportunities: Business Models and Political Thought in Silicon Valley
It’s a rare buccaneer who runs a book club. But in October 2012, the chief administrator of the Silk Road drug market, under the pseudonym ...
Read More
Academic Article
Henry Farrell Talks to Kim Stanley Robinson
Henry Farrell and Kim Stanley Robinson (2024), “Henry Farrell Talks to Kim Stanley Robinson,” Vector, 299. Henry Farrell teaches democracy and international affairs at Johns ...
Read More
Essay
Consulting Firms Have Stumbled Into a Geopolitical Minefield – with Abraham Newman
Earlier this year, McKinsey executives found themselves in serious political trouble. The Financial Times reported that their China branch had boasted in 2019 of its ...
Read More
Academic Article
Bias, Skew and Search Engines Suffice to Explain Online Toxicity – with Cosma Shalizi
Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi (2024), “Bias, Skew and Search Engines Suffice to Explain Online Toxicity,” Communications of the ACM, preprint, 67,4:25-28. U.S. political discourse ...
Read More
Essay
Canada Needs to Start Preparing for Trump – and Getting Other Allies Involved – with Abraham Newman
If Donald Trump wins the presidential elections in November, even Canadians could be blocked from their bank accounts. In our recent book… Henry Farrell and ...
Read More
Academic Article
The Moral Economy of High-Tech Modernism – with Marion Fourcade
This short piece compares 21st century machine learning to 19th and 20th century bureaucracy – we hope to write more. While people in and around ...
Read More
Essay
Can Big Tech Serve Democracy? – with Glen Weyl
New tools and technology policy might help, but politics come first. Two new books about technology and the fate of democracy begin by describing the ...
Read More
Essay
AI’s Big Rift is Like a Religious Schism
TWO CENTURIES ago Henri de Saint-Simon, a French utopian, proposed a new religion, worshipping the godlike force of progress, with Isaac Newton as its chief ...
Read More
Public WritingReview
Review by Paul Krugman, “The American Way of Economic War”
Suppose that a company in Peru wants to do business with a company in Malaysia. It should not be hard for the firms to make ...
Read More
Essay
Binance and the End of Crypto’s Dream to Escape From Government – with Abraham Newman
On Nov. 21, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, pleaded guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money-laundering laws. Its CEO has stepped down, and the company will ...
Read More
Essay
The New Economic Security State: How De-Risking Will Remake Geopolitics – with Abraham Newman
In April 2023, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan begged his listeners’ indulgence for straying out of his lane by delivering a major address about ...
Read More
Essay
What If These Economic Weapons Fall into Trump’s Hands? – with Abraham Newman
The Biden administration has built an unprecedented machine for economic and technological coercion. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and its allies cut off ...
Read More
Essay
What Happens When Tech Bros Run National Security? – with Abraham Newman
It’s September 2023, and markets have become battlefields, as economics and geopolitics become ever more closely intertwined. Many think that we are returning to the ...
Read More
Essay
How a Single Hard-Charging CEO Helped the US Dollar Take Over the World – with Abraham Newman
Walter Wriston was once one of the most powerful people on the planet. The chairman of the financial giant Citibank and its parent corporation, Citicorp, ...
Read More
Essay
How the U.S. Stumbled Into Using Chips as a Weapon Against China – with Abraham Newman
Last October, the Biden administration unleashed one of its biggest countermeasures to date against China’s military ambitions: export controls on, among other things, cutting-edge semiconductors ...
Read More
Essay
American Influence: Ireland Must Focus on Economic Security as Arena of Vulnerability
After decades of neglect, Ireland is finally debating national security. Unfortunately, we don’t just need to catch up with the rest of the world, but ...
Read More
Essay
Behold the AI shoggoth – with Cosma Shalizi
Artificial intelligence is a familiar-looking monster The academics argue that large language models have much older cousins in markets and bureaucracies An internet meme keeps on ...
Read More
Academic Article
Analytical Democracy: A Microfoundational Approach – with Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg
Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg (2023), “Analytical Democracy: A Microfoundational Approach,” American Political Science Review. 117,2:767-772. A prominent and publicly influential literature challenges ...
Read More