Huge fan of his book one of the things I have read multiple times. What happens to Capital and Labor with AI. Labor cost goes down, capital is all that matters?
Ken Griffin recently said he went home one Friday “fairly depressed” after watching AI agents at Citadel complete work in days that previously took teams of finance PhDs months. He specifically said this was not low-skill work being automated, but “extraordinarily high skilled jobs.”
From an economic perspective, if frontier AI meaningfully reduces the labor constraint on highly specialized work, does that compress the advantage of elite firms? For example, if someone straight out of college can run quant-level analysis or research workflows that previously required large teams of elite talent, what happens to the value of human capital, institutional scale, and information asymmetry over time?
Ken Griffin recently said he went home one Friday “fairly depressed” after watching AI agents at Citadel complete work in days that previously took teams of finance PhDs months. He specifically said this was not low-skill work being automated, but “extraordinarily high skilled jobs.”
From an economic perspective, if frontier AI meaningfully reduces the labor constraint on highly specialized work, does that compress the advantage of elite firms? For example, if someone straight out of college can run quant-level analysis or research workflows that previously required large teams of elite talent, what happens to the value of human capital, institutional scale, and information asymmetry over time? Smart people no longer need to work at Citadel?
One day will we have everything figured out and we can decide what serves as humans versus what might not. Or is there no end to advancement no end to solving more problems and understanding of the universe.
If the goal is to grow as quickly as possible, improve quality of life, and maintain supremacy, wouldn’t the two things everyone should agree on be maximizing healthcare outcomes so people can return to the workforce quickly and more effectively, and making education top tier so people enter the workforce far more productive?
I do a lot of fund of funds investing, and I never get a good or clear answer on this.
So I've been researching the oral Wegovy (semaglutide 25mg) as an alternative to injections and came across a February 2026 study out of Adelaide University that I haven't seen discussed much here.
Basically the study isolated the effects of SNAC — the carrier molecule that helps semaglutide survive your stomach acid — separate from semaglutide itself. What they found was pretty surprising:
- Fiber-fermenting gut bacteria (Muribaculaceae and Bacteroidaceae) dropped by 62–77%
- Butyrate (a short-chain fatty acid that feeds your colon cells and supports brain health) fell by 77%
- TNF-α, an inflammation marker, went up 70%
- BDNF — a protein linked to cognition and neuroplasticity — was suppressed by 85%
The SNAC thing matters because unlike the injection, you're exposing your gut to this carrier molecule every single day, indefinitely. It briefly disrupts your stomach lining each morning to let the peptide absorb. Rybelsus has used SNAC since 2019 but at lower doses and nowhere near the scale the Wegovy pill is heading toward.
As someone not in the field wondering if this study actually is not that concerning or what other research is out their.
EDIT: Study here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168365926001136
So I've been researching the oral Wegovy (semaglutide 25mg) as an alternative to injections and came across a February 2026 study out of Adelaide University that I haven't seen discussed much here.
Basically the study isolated the effects of SNAC — the carrier molecule that helps semaglutide survive your stomach acid — separate from semaglutide itself. What they found was pretty surprising:
- Fiber-fermenting gut bacteria (Muribaculaceae and Bacteroidaceae) dropped by 62–77%
- Butyrate (a short-chain fatty acid that feeds your colon cells and supports brain health) fell by 77%
- TNF-α, an inflammation marker, went up 70%
- BDNF — a protein linked to cognition and neuroplasticity — was suppressed by 85%
The SNAC thing matters because unlike the injection, you're exposing your gut to this carrier molecule every single day, indefinitely. It briefly disrupts your stomach lining each morning to let the peptide absorb. Rybelsus has used SNAC since 2019 but at lower doses and nowhere near the scale the Wegovy pill is heading toward.
As someone not in the field wondering if this study actually is not that concerning or what other research is out their.
My understanding of learning the language when I was younger is there is so much gender pronouns in the language. Curious about this!
Not that it has to be one or the other. But if the population was say decreasing at a rate of 5 percent per year. Would humans still need economic growth to sustain their desire to improve every year?
If AI replaces even 10 to 20 percent of white collar jobs, how does the economy continue functioning normally long term?
Wouldn’t that mean:
• lower aggregate wages
• weaker consumer spending
• lower payroll and income tax revenue
• larger fiscal deficits
• weaker labor bargaining power
• extreme capital concentration into a few AI firms
The US economy is heavily consumption driven. If productivity growth becomes disconnected from employment growth, who exactly maintains aggregate demand?
I understand the corporate incentive and the geopolitical argument around China, but from a macroeconomic perspective I genuinely do not understand what the equilibrium is supposed to look like if labor becomes structurally less necessary over time.
Let’s just say AI works exactly how it is being marketed. Even using a conservative assumption and saying it replaces 20 percent paying jobs today. Large corporations would stop paying portions of the workforce and instead redirect that money toward companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. That would represent one of the largest wealth transfers in modern history, shifting income away from labor and toward a very small number of AI and infrastructure companies. If even 15 to 20 percent of US wage income was displaced, you are potentially talking about trillions of dollars moving from households toward capital owners and AI infrastructure providers over time. And create a oligarchy class in the US and world like never seen before
From an economic perspective that would likely mean lower wages across large parts of the economy, reduced payroll and income tax revenue for the US government, weaker consumer spending, and even larger deficits.
It also creates a strange political dynamic where the largest AI companies could become economically more powerful than entire industries. If corporations need fewer workers but increasingly depend on a small number of AI providers, those firms begin accumulating enormous leverage over the economy itself.
If AI dramatically reduces the need for human labor faster than new industries emerge, Who wants this????
The only argument that seems to override all of this is the idea that China could get there first. But even that feels more complicated than people present it. China still has massive exposure to manufacturing, logistics, and blue collar labor, and frontier AI also depends on huge amounts of energy, chips, and data center infrastructure. China can not automate the labor force like the US is suggesting.
If China became the clear global leader in AI, what do people think the realistic long term risks actually are from a technological, economic, or governance perspective?
Do people think cultural and historical governing philosophies would still meaningfully shape how an AI superpower behaves, or does technological dominance eventually make all major powers act similarly regardless of culture?
For example, was imperial China historically more focused on regional stability, tribute systems, and internal unity than overseas conquest and colonization in the style later associated with European empires such as Britain or the Dutch Republic? Based on those historical patterns, how did Chinese dynasties generally view the idea of projecting power beyond their immediate sphere of influence, and is it fair to say their model of dominance differed fundamentally from later Western imperial powers?
If historians apply that historical lens forward, would they expect similar patterns of behavior from a modern Chinese superpower today, and historically speaking would there be reason to fear that kind of dominance in the same way people feared European imperial powers? Or would it be completely diffrent
And why does it seem like he is so controversial and or forgotten a lot of the time did his theories not hold up?
what was so controversial about his finding and why did they matter so much? Three are so many different stories and rumors about him and what happened I find the whole thing confusing.
I know the evacuation at Dunkirk is treated as one of the defining moments of World War II, but I am curious why it mattered so much strategically and psychologically. Was it important mainly because Britain saved a massive number of soldiers, or because if Dunkirk failed the entire war may have unfolded differently?
I also wonder how people viewed it at the time. Did it feel like a victory, a disaster, or something in between?
I know there is still debate around how modern labels apply to people in the ancient world, but from what I understand Alexander the Great had relationships with men and it was not exactly hidden. I am curious how openly accepted this was during his lifetime. Did people around him openly know about it, or was it something more private that historians later pieced together?