Economic Devastation - The Real Cost of Climate Change ⋆ AI of the week ⋆ Manage anxiety like a stoic

Covering some serious topics today...

Thing 1 - The Real Cost of Climate Change
Thing 2 - AI of the week
Thing 3 - Manage anxiety like a stoic

3 things in 3 minutes. Let's go!

Thing 1 - The Real Cost of Climate Change

I came across some eye-opening insights from a recent NBER working paper on climate change and its economic impact.

Here's the gist:

• Global Temperature Impact
  A 1°C increase in global temperature could cause a 12% drop in world GDP. That's massive!
• Social Cost of Carbon
  They estimated the true cost of carbon emission to be $1,056 per ton of CO2 - way higher than we thought.
• Welfare Loss
  If we keep going as we are, we could see a 31% loss in overall welfare value.
• Unilateral Policy
  Big players like the U.S. could save money by implementing their decarbonization policies.
• Long-term Economic Impact
  By 2100, in a scenario where the world's temperature increases by 3°C above pre-industrial levels, output could decline by 50%, and consumption could see a comparable decline. This results in a long-term welfare loss that could reach 52%.
• Missed Economic Growth
  Without the observed 0.75°C increase in global temperatures from 1960 to 2019, world GDP per capita would be 37% higher today. This represents a significant reduction in economic growth due to climate change.

These findings, if confirmed, imply that the economic damage from climate change is way more significant than we thought.

Thing 2 - AI of the week

tl;dr Google announced a bunch on I/O '24. OpenAI announced a bunch of similar stuff. Other things happened as well. (Wow, Z, that's some summary!)

• OpenAI launched GPT-4o model (that's "four oh", not forty) AND it's available to free users as well.

im-also-a-good-gpt2-chatbot is a codename for GPT-4o and it got the top ELO score

• Ilya and a bunch of other people left OpenAI. Is this tying the loose ends from the drama earlier in the year?
• Apple announced iOS 18 will introduce Eye Tracking
• OpenAI announced a ChatGPT Mac App
• Gemini 1.5 Flash (Preview) is Google's fastest and most cost-effective multimodal AI model. It is designed for lower-cost, high-volume tasks and latency-sensitive applications that require quick responses
• Google demoed Project Astra running on a Google Pixel phone and a prototype glasses device, showcasing its capabilities.
  It's a multimodal AI assistant that combines speech, vision, text, and memory capabilities to enable natural interactions
• Meta published a paper on Chameleon - Mixed-Modal early-fusion foundation models - models capable of understanding and generating images and text in any sequence
• OpenAI and Reddit announced a partnership
  - OpenAI will bring Reddit content to ChatGPT and new products
  - Reddit will let users and mods use some AI-powered features
  - OpenAI will become a Reddit advertising partner

It's been a busy week so many things didn't make it to this email...

Thing 3 - Manage anxiety like a stoic

After how this email started, you might need a way to manage anxiety. Stoics to the rescue! 🙌
You must be trolling me, Z...
(h/t Daily Stoic)

Make the best use of what is in your power, take the rest as it happens.

- Epictetus

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

- Seneca

It's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things.

- Epictetus

Cheers, Zvonimir