Links 2023-09-05
How is tipping and AI related?
You should think more highly of these two otherwise very distant things.
Tipping is good, we seem to be trying to ruin it, and Anthony Gill is here to set things right. Each piece in his three-part series is valuable.
Tipping, Part I: “Tipping turns out to be an ingenious mechanism for solving principal-agent problems in a number of service-oriented industries.”
Tipping, Part II: “In essence, tipping is an ingenious system of voluntary price-discrimination wherein customers self-select the amount they willingly pay based upon a social norm prompting individuals to reward those who satisfy their expectations.” [emphasis in original]
Tipping, Part III: “To the extent that the vast majority of people in society adhere to the norm of appropriate and gracious tipping, we can assume that most people we encounter (even if we do not know them well) are reasonably trustworthy in their dealings.”
AI rather than kill us all, Marc Andreessen believes that AI will save the world.
His Substack post lays it out in print, and his EconTalk episode verbalizes it in interview form. [NB: Russ Robert’s has been particularly good at having a variety of guests on the topic of AI as well as providing deep insights himself.]