Archive for October, 2025

AI: Not taking jobs yet?

Martha Gimbel et al., "Evaluating the Impact of AI on the Labor Market: Current State of Affairs", The Budget Lab (Yale) 10/1/2025:

Overall, our metrics indicate that the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption since ChatGPT’s release 33 months ago, undercutting fears that AI automation is currently eroding the demand for cognitive labor across the economy.

While this finding may contradict the most alarming headlines, it is not surprising given past precedents. Historically, widespread technological disruption in workplaces tends to occur over decades, rather than months or years. Computers didn’t become commonplace in offices until nearly a decade after their release to the public, and it took even longer for them to transform office workflows. Even if new AI technologies will go on to impact the labor market as much, or more, dramatically, it is reasonable to expect that widespread effects will take longer than 33 months to materialize.

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Freudian slip of the century: "Let's stop attacking pedophiles"

Senator Ted Cruz making an impassioned speech at a Senate hearing on Tuesday about reaching a “bipartisan agreement” on crime:

“How about we all come together and say, ‘let’s stop murders?’

“How about we all come together and say ‘let’s stop rape?’

“How about we all come together and say ‘let’s stop attacking pedophiles’.” 

(Independent [10/1/25]; videos here and here)

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Sino-Japanese n- / d- initial interchange

In his remarks on "Stay hyDRAEted", Alec Strange noted that you can't avoid reading dorei no remonēdo ドレイのレモネーど  (intended to be "Drae's Lemonade") as "slave lemonade" (dorei / ドレイ / 奴隷 ["slave"]).  Coming at 奴隷 from the Sinitic side, my instinct is to read 奴隷 as beginning with an n- (or in a few cases l-), so it would have nothing to do with "Drae's".

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