Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 7d

Gemini 2.5 Pro is very solid all around. Claude is better at coding. Last place, for most tasks: ChatGPT-5. However, I have actually been quite impressed with Chinese Open weight models such as Qwen3..

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 8d

I have been incredibly fortunate to learn both from my amazing coauthors and a fantastic set of HBS alumni. And this work will be foundational for more forthcoming research (by others and myself) on how AI will impact the process of making business strategy going forward.

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 8d

What is more, we establish causal evidence that business education has a persistent impact on CEO's strategy process -- even decades later. (So yes, business education does actually matter..)

1

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 8d

Our basic result is that strategic decision-making styles vary widely across CEOs and that CEOs with more structured practices (proactive, consistent and hypothesis-driven), tend to outperform their (less-structured) peers especially in industries with high degrees of strategic complexity.

1 1

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 8d

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/...

How Do Chief Executive Officers Make Strategy? | Management Science

pubsonline.informs.org

1 1 4

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 16d

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.

Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 17d

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

1

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 17d

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)

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 22d

"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...

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

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 23d

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...

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

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 25d

On the Charlie Kirk assassination: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." (Isaac Asimov, Foundation)

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

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · 27d

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...

Faith in God-like large language models is waning

That may be good news for AI laggards like Apple

www.economist.com

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Sep 6

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."

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Sep 4

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...

1 1

Reposted by MJ Yang

Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · Aug 27

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!

John Cassidy @johncassidysays.bsky.social · Aug 25

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...

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

3 9

Reposted by MJ Yang

Kevin A. Bryan @afinetheorem.bsky.social · Aug 25

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

1 4 17

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Aug 20

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...

Sam Altman says ‘yes,’ AI is in a bubble

Is the bubble about to burst?

www.theverge.com

1

Reposted by MJ Yang

Ben Spigel @benspigel.bsky.social · Aug 19

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...

2 1 6

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Aug 9

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..

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Aug 8

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

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Aug 8

This also raises huge issues for replicability of research based on older ChatGPT models..

3

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Aug 7

Urg

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Aug 7

Confirmed, geez

1

Reposted by MJ Yang

David Dunning @daviddunning6.bsky.social · Aug 7

There are two Bs!

1 12 82

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Aug 7

ChatGPT-5 is here.

1 2

Reposted by MJ Yang

Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · Aug 3

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

1 5 9

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Jul 26

Disruption of the traditional MBA is here, whether we want it or not..

Guillaume Carton @cartonguillaume.bsky.social · Jul 26

‘WE’RE NOT LEARNING ANYTHING’: Stanford GSB Students Sound The Alarm Over Academics

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

1

MJ Yang @mjyang.bsky.social · Jul 26

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.

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Jul 26

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 1