Phil Trammell is an Oxford PhD student in economics and research associate at the Global Priorities Institute. Phil is one of the smartest person I know, when considering the intersection of the long-term future and economic growth. Funnily enough, Phil was my roomate, a few years ago in Oxford, and last time I called him he casually said that he had written an extensive report on the econ of AI. A few weeks ago, I decided that I would read that report (which actually is a literature review), and that I would translate everything that I learn along the way to diagrams, so you too can learn what’s inside that paper. The video covers everything from MacroEconomics 101 to self-improving AI in about 30-ish diagrams.

• paper: https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Philip-Trammell-and-Anton-Korinek_economic-growth-under-transformative-ai.pdf
• video: https://youtu.be/2GCNmmDrRsk
• slides: https://www.canva.com/design/DAErBy0hqfQ/sVy6XJmgtJ_cYrGS87_uhw/view

Outline:

- 00:00 Podcast intro

- 01:19 Phil's intro

- 08:58 What's GDP

- 13:42 Decreasing growth

- 15:40 Permanent growth increase

- 19:02 Singularity of type I

- 22:58 Singularity of type II

- 23:24 Production function

- 24:10 The Economy as a two-tubes factory

- 25:09 Marginal Products of labor/capital

- 27:48 Labor/capital-augmenting technology

- 29:13 Technological progress since Ford

- 38:18 Factor payments

- 41:30 Elasticity of substitution

- 48:34 Production function with substitution

- 53:18 Perfect substitutability

- 54:00 Perfect complements

- 55:44 Exogenous growth

- 59:56 How to get long-run growth

- 01:05:40 Endogenous growth

- 01:10:40 The research feedback parameter

- 01:17:35 AI as an imperfect substitute for human labor

- 01:25:25 A simple model for perfect substitution

- 01:33:09 AI as a perfect substitute

- 01:36:07 Substitutability in robotics production

- 01:40:43 OpenAI automating coding

- 01:44:38 Growth impacts via impacts on savings

- 01:46:44 AI in task-based models of good productions

- 01:53:26 AI in technology production

- 02:03:55 Limits of the econ model

- 02:09:00 Conclusion