MJ Yang
@mjyang.bsky.social
Research faculty at Leeds School of Business, CU-Boulder. https://mjyang.com/ Researching Scientific Entrepreneurship, Technological Uniqueness, and AI #scientificentrepreneurship, #strategy, #innovation
In case you missed it: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar insinuating OpenAI would be "open" to a bailout by the Federal Government for its 1.5 trillion chip purchase contracts...
www.wsj.com/video/openai...
www.wsj.com/video/openai...
OpenAI CFO Would Support Federal Backstop for Chip Investments
Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s finance chief, says the company would support federal measures to make it easier to finance sizable investments in AI chips. She spoke at WSJ’s Tech Live event in California.
www.wsj.com
November 7, 2025 at 3:02 AM
In case you missed it: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar insinuating OpenAI would be "open" to a bailout by the Federal Government for its 1.5 trillion chip purchase contracts...
www.wsj.com/video/openai...
www.wsj.com/video/openai...
Reposted by MJ Yang
New WP (by me and others) on how disclosure mandates:
(1) increase disclosure (primarily of negative outcomes), and (2) how expectations of increased disclosure by others slows down innovation.
Link and more details in @florianederer.bsky.social's thread...
(1) increase disclosure (primarily of negative outcomes), and (2) how expectations of increased disclosure by others slows down innovation.
Link and more details in @florianederer.bsky.social's thread...
Transparency helps innovation ... until it doesn't.
My new paper with Cunningham, Hodgson, and Wang (on the JM!) studies the 2017 FDA Final Rule, which required drug firms to publicly disclose all clinical trial results.
Disclosure increased, but innovation slowed.
cowles.yale.edu/sites/defaul...
My new paper with Cunningham, Hodgson, and Wang (on the JM!) studies the 2017 FDA Final Rule, which required drug firms to publicly disclose all clinical trial results.
Disclosure increased, but innovation slowed.
cowles.yale.edu/sites/defaul...
October 16, 2025 at 5:52 PM
New WP (by me and others) on how disclosure mandates:
(1) increase disclosure (primarily of negative outcomes), and (2) how expectations of increased disclosure by others slows down innovation.
Link and more details in @florianederer.bsky.social's thread...
(1) increase disclosure (primarily of negative outcomes), and (2) how expectations of increased disclosure by others slows down innovation.
Link and more details in @florianederer.bsky.social's thread...
PSA on United Airlines: If you miss your initial flight from a roundtrip they cancel all subsequent flights and keep your money. And airline is unwilling to rebook even though they have available seats. Just rebooked with Delta Air Lines, to leave SFO..
October 13, 2025 at 7:54 PM
PSA on United Airlines: If you miss your initial flight from a roundtrip they cancel all subsequent flights and keep your money. And airline is unwilling to rebook even though they have available seats. Just rebooked with Delta Air Lines, to leave SFO..
Very happy to see this paper in (online) print. Together with Michael Christensen, @raffasadun.bsky.social , @nickbloom.bsky.social and Jan Rivkin, we interviewed hundreds of CEOs to measure how they make business strategy.
pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/...
pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/...
How Do Chief Executive Officers Make Strategy? | Management Science
pubsonline.informs.org
September 30, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Very happy to see this paper in (online) print. Together with Michael Christensen, @raffasadun.bsky.social , @nickbloom.bsky.social and Jan Rivkin, we interviewed hundreds of CEOs to measure how they make business strategy.
pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/...
pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/...
Yes, the idea that LLMs pay uniform attention to everything in a paper (or are "better at paying attention that humans") is a widely believed myth.
I've never understood the idea that LLMs could be used to summarise research papers. Papers already have an abstract & clearly divided sections (methods/discussion), enabling us to quickly focus on the information that interests us. What else but dross could these bullshitting machines add to this?
Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papers
LLM “tended to sacrifice accuracy for simplicity” when writing news briefs.
arstechnica.com
September 21, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Yes, the idea that LLMs pay uniform attention to everything in a paper (or are "better at paying attention that humans") is a widely believed myth.
Financial crisis? "According to Moody’s, structured finance has become a popular way to pay for new data center projects, with more than $9 billion of issuance in the commercial mortgage-backed security and asset-backed security markets during the first four months of 2025." (Ian Frisch, NYTimes)
September 21, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Financial crisis? "According to Moody’s, structured finance has become a popular way to pay for new data center projects, with more than $9 billion of issuance in the commercial mortgage-backed security and asset-backed security markets during the first four months of 2025." (Ian Frisch, NYTimes)
"Accenture, (...), in its most recent quarter reported a $100 million increase in new generative AI bookings quarter over quarter. That is down from a $200 million quarter-over-quarter increase the previous two periods."
www.wsj.com/articles/how...
www.wsj.com/articles/how...
How the AI Boom Is Leaving Consultants Behind
Consultants have a lot to gain helping companies deploy the most transformative technology in decades. Some clients say so far they have overpromised and underdelivered.
www.wsj.com
September 15, 2025 at 8:21 PM
"Accenture, (...), in its most recent quarter reported a $100 million increase in new generative AI bookings quarter over quarter. That is down from a $200 million quarter-over-quarter increase the previous two periods."
www.wsj.com/articles/how...
www.wsj.com/articles/how...
PSA if you travel to SMS-SF: I used the SMS-provided promo code on United and compared it with exactly the same flight without the promo code. The code made my airfare $40 MORE expensive. Nice anecdote for price discrimination or business ethics?
www.colorado.edu/today/2025/0...
www.colorado.edu/today/2025/0...
Your next airline ticket could be priced by AI
Delta is testing an AI-powered pricing system that could charge two travelers different fares even if they are purchasing at the same moment. Pricing strategy
www.colorado.edu
September 15, 2025 at 4:44 PM
PSA if you travel to SMS-SF: I used the SMS-provided promo code on United and compared it with exactly the same flight without the promo code. The code made my airfare $40 MORE expensive. Nice anecdote for price discrimination or business ethics?
www.colorado.edu/today/2025/0...
www.colorado.edu/today/2025/0...
On the Charlie Kirk assassination: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." (Isaac Asimov, Foundation)
www.cnn.com/2025/09/12/u...
www.cnn.com/2025/09/12/u...
Full press conference: Governor names Charlie Kirk shooting suspect | CNN
Utah’s governor Spencer Cox says they have a suspect in the Charlie Kirk shooting in custody. Cox identified the suspect as Tyler Robinson and presented the evidence investigators have uncovered at a ...
www.cnn.com
September 12, 2025 at 6:51 PM
On the Charlie Kirk assassination: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." (Isaac Asimov, Foundation)
www.cnn.com/2025/09/12/u...
www.cnn.com/2025/09/12/u...
The LLM turning point is coming ( = we may be close to the "peak of inflated expectations" in the Hype Cycle).
www.economist.com/business/202...
www.economist.com/business/202...
Faith in God-like large language models is waning
That may be good news for AI laggards like Apple
www.economist.com
September 10, 2025 at 6:42 PM
The LLM turning point is coming ( = we may be close to the "peak of inflated expectations" in the Hype Cycle).
www.economist.com/business/202...
www.economist.com/business/202...
Have we learned nothing from conflicts of interest during the subprime housing crisis? "Both authors have a financial interest in
www.expectedparrot.com. Horton is an economic advisor to Anthropic."
www.expectedparrot.com. Horton is an economic advisor to Anthropic."
This is a cool paper that suggests that AI agents can indeed be used for social science experiments, but that just using a chatbot isn't good enough, instead prompts developed based on social & game theory makes AI agent actions predictive of real human outcomes. benjaminmanning.io/files/optimi...
September 6, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Have we learned nothing from conflicts of interest during the subprime housing crisis? "Both authors have a financial interest in
www.expectedparrot.com. Horton is an economic advisor to Anthropic."
www.expectedparrot.com. Horton is an economic advisor to Anthropic."
Reposted by MJ Yang
Excited to have my research (co-authored with the dream team of @mjyang.bsky.social, Zachary Kroff, and @erikbryn.bsky.social) featured in the New Yorker!
In Silicon Valley, people like to move at breakneck pace and break things. Economic history says: not so fast. My latest column argues that the economic payoffs from AI may take longer than expected to appear.
www.newyorker.com/news/the-fin...
www.newyorker.com/news/the-fin...
The A.I.-Profits Drought and the Lessons of History
Like the steam engine, electricity, and computers, generative artificial intelligence could take longer than expected to transform the economy.
www.newyorker.com
August 27, 2025 at 1:17 AM
Excited to have my research (co-authored with the dream team of @mjyang.bsky.social, Zachary Kroff, and @erikbryn.bsky.social) featured in the New Yorker!
Reposted by MJ Yang
Incredibly excited for my brand new class at Rotman this fall: Progress! Econ history + theory + history of thought + philosophy on why rare orgs at rare times in rare places accomplish new things. Trying to put rigor onto an idea that is very much in the air. kevinbryanecon.com/Bryan-Progre... 1/3
August 25, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Incredibly excited for my brand new class at Rotman this fall: Progress! Econ history + theory + history of thought + philosophy on why rare orgs at rare times in rare places accomplish new things. Trying to put rigor onto an idea that is very much in the air. kevinbryanecon.com/Bryan-Progre... 1/3
Seems Sam Altman thinks "Yes", AI is in a bubble? Yet, he wants to let OpenAI employees convert stock to cash with an implied valuation of $500 Billion? (with a B!). What happend to getting "PhD level" ChatGPT-5 expertise, .. (checks notes) .. two weeks ago?!?
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Sam Altman says ‘yes,’ AI is in a bubble
Is the bubble about to burst?
www.theverge.com
August 20, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Seems Sam Altman thinks "Yes", AI is in a bubble? Yet, he wants to let OpenAI employees convert stock to cash with an implied valuation of $500 Billion? (with a B!). What happend to getting "PhD level" ChatGPT-5 expertise, .. (checks notes) .. two weeks ago?!?
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Reposted by MJ Yang
There is an.....interesting op-ed in today's WSJ from a 22 year old entrepreneur telling everyone that work life balance will "keep you mediocre" It is completly wrong. Let me tell you why with citations. [gift link to the very wrong op-ed] 1/n www.wsj.com/opinion/work...
August 19, 2025 at 2:57 PM
There is an.....interesting op-ed in today's WSJ from a 22 year old entrepreneur telling everyone that work life balance will "keep you mediocre" It is completly wrong. Let me tell you why with citations. [gift link to the very wrong op-ed] 1/n www.wsj.com/opinion/work...
Odd, or signal that ChatGPT-5 is lower quality, but cheaper to run, because it decides when a high-token test-time compute run is triggered..
Suddenly retiring every other model without warning was a weird move by OpenAI
… and they did it without explaining how switching models worked or even details of various GPT-5 models
…and they did it after many built workflows & training & assignments around older models, maybe breaking them. Odd
… and they did it without explaining how switching models worked or even details of various GPT-5 models
…and they did it after many built workflows & training & assignments around older models, maybe breaking them. Odd
August 9, 2025 at 2:38 AM
Odd, or signal that ChatGPT-5 is lower quality, but cheaper to run, because it decides when a high-token test-time compute run is triggered..
Reposted by MJ Yang
There are two Bs!
August 7, 2025 at 9:49 PM
There are two Bs!
Reposted by MJ Yang
You should read @noahpinion.blogsky.venki.dev on the data centre investments and whether they will lead to a financial crisis. I think he downplays the risk. It is potentially very high. www.noahpinion.blog/p/will-data-...
Will data centers crash the economy?
This time let's think about a financial crisis before it happens.
www.noahpinion.blog
August 3, 2025 at 7:11 PM
You should read @noahpinion.blogsky.venki.dev on the data centre investments and whether they will lead to a financial crisis. I think he downplays the risk. It is potentially very high. www.noahpinion.blog/p/will-data-...
Disruption of the traditional MBA is here, whether we want it or not..
‘WE’RE NOT LEARNING ANYTHING’: Stanford GSB Students Sound The Alarm Over Academics
poetsandquants.com/2025/07/23/w...
poetsandquants.com/2025/07/23/w...
'WE'RE NOT LEARNING ANYTHING’: Stanford GSB Students Sound The Alarm Over Academics
Mounting frustration — and concern over brand dilution — inside one of the world's top MBA programs; addressing concerns 'a top priority,' says new leadership team.
poetsandquants.com
July 26, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Disruption of the traditional MBA is here, whether we want it or not..
Consider: Google has a 90% market share in web and mobile searches. And has Gemini LLM results on top by default on any search. Are 1 trillion processed tokens really a sign of usefulness? (Same question about MSFT forcing LLMs on their developers..)
We see "revealed preference", just not for LLMs.
We see "revealed preference", just not for LLMs.
Three things to note about this:
1) AI has obvious utility to many, this is a tremendous amount of use already
2) There is room for multiple frontier model providers, at least for now
3) Any losses from subsidizing cost of AI use (and it is not clear this is happening) are now relatively small
1) AI has obvious utility to many, this is a tremendous amount of use already
2) There is room for multiple frontier model providers, at least for now
3) Any losses from subsidizing cost of AI use (and it is not clear this is happening) are now relatively small
July 26, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Consider: Google has a 90% market share in web and mobile searches. And has Gemini LLM results on top by default on any search. Are 1 trillion processed tokens really a sign of usefulness? (Same question about MSFT forcing LLMs on their developers..)
We see "revealed preference", just not for LLMs.
We see "revealed preference", just not for LLMs.
Reposted by MJ Yang
I have been thinking about this a lot, lately, after finding the troubling productivity impacts of AI on older firms ( conference.nber.org/conf_papers/... ), combined with prior work showing the impacts of digitization on older workers (www.nber.org/papers/w28094).
#EconSky
#EconSky
July 23, 2025 at 5:40 PM
I have been thinking about this a lot, lately, after finding the troubling productivity impacts of AI on older firms ( conference.nber.org/conf_papers/... ), combined with prior work showing the impacts of digitization on older workers (www.nber.org/papers/w28094).
#EconSky
#EconSky
Naked self-promotion: My fantastic co-author @kmcelheran.bsky.social will present our empirical paper on "Industrial AI" (self-driving forklifts, self-optimizing production lines, autonomous quality control) and its effect on productivity in US manufacturing.
www.nber.org/conferences/...
www.nber.org/conferences/...
SI 2025 Digital Economics and Artificial Intelligence
www.nber.org
July 17, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Naked self-promotion: My fantastic co-author @kmcelheran.bsky.social will present our empirical paper on "Industrial AI" (self-driving forklifts, self-optimizing production lines, autonomous quality control) and its effect on productivity in US manufacturing.
www.nber.org/conferences/...
www.nber.org/conferences/...
Its not me, its the LLMs: in domains including coding, math, mapping, logic and now simple physics, they overfit and are unable to generalize. Still waiting for ChatGPT-5 btw..
Can an AI model predict perfectly and still have a terrible world model?
What would that even mean?
Our new ICML paper (poster tomorrow!) formalizes these questions.
One result tells the story: A transformer trained on 10M solar systems nails planetary orbits. But it botches gravitational laws 🧵
What would that even mean?
Our new ICML paper (poster tomorrow!) formalizes these questions.
One result tells the story: A transformer trained on 10M solar systems nails planetary orbits. But it botches gravitational laws 🧵
July 14, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Its not me, its the LLMs: in domains including coding, math, mapping, logic and now simple physics, they overfit and are unable to generalize. Still waiting for ChatGPT-5 btw..
I agree that teachers (=experts) using LLMs has clear benefits. I think the evidence of benefits of LLMs for students is less consistent and more context dependent. LLMs are not a hoax, but also clearly over-hyped.
The repeated argument that I see on this site that AI is not actually useful to real people needs to be retired based on the representative national surveys we now have on AI users.
Teachers using AI report 6 hour a week time savings. Workers using AI report 3x productivity gains on 1/5 of tasks.
Teachers using AI report 6 hour a week time savings. Workers using AI report 3x productivity gains on 1/5 of tasks.
June 30, 2025 at 1:56 PM
I agree that teachers (=experts) using LLMs has clear benefits. I think the evidence of benefits of LLMs for students is less consistent and more context dependent. LLMs are not a hoax, but also clearly over-hyped.