Financial Mindset

AI may be restoring the importance of the liberal arts degree, at least according to the cofounder of one of the industry’s biggest players. Jack Clark, a billionaire cofounder of Anthropic and a former journalist who majored in English literature with creative writing, said his literary education and knowledge of “the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future,” helped him become an influential figure in the world of AI. “I’m a literature graduate and I don’t think you’d put that as a cofounder of a frontier AI company but what turned out to be useful is that I got to learn a lot about history and a lot about the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future,” he said during the Semafor World Economy Summit Monday. “That’s turned out to be, like, extremely relevant for AI in a way that I think people wouldn’t have predicted,” he added. For young people trying to figure out where they fit in the increasingly AI-fueled economy, their best bet may be learnin...

Early on April 13, the oil tanker Rich Starry—loaded with Iranian crude and headed for China—made a dramatic U-turn. Instead of exiting the Strait of Hormuz, as it had planned, the ship joined a stationary flotilla of about 800 other vessels, including 400 oil and gas tankers, most of which have remained idle and stranded since late February. “We have not seen any transits from tankers since the U.S. blockade began this morning,” said Claire Jungman, director of maritime risk and intelligence for Vortexa, while noting the abrupt turnaround of the Rich Starry. As peace talks between the U.S. and Iran fell apart over the weekend —although back-channel communication continues—President Donald Trump decided the U.S. would initiate its own blockade over the watery chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically flows. Instead of Iran letting through almost 10% of the normal traffic through a financial tolling system, traffic has for now been r...

China now has a word for token: ciyuan .  Liu Liehong, the administrator of China’s National Data Administration, the country’s main data regulator, unveiled the term at a State Council press conference in March, explaining that tokens were now “the settlement unit linking technological supply with commercial demand.”  The National Data Administration disclosed that China now processes 140 trillion tokens every day, up from just 100 billion at the start of 2024 . Chinese AI models have now surpassed U.S. models on OpenRouter, a popular marketplace for AI models.  Investors have bought into the AI boom. IPOs in Hong Kong are at a five-year high thanks to a steady stream of Chinese AI and tech startups, including AI labs MiniMax and Zhipu AI, and chip designer Biren.  “We believe that China is the big winner in this tech war for a number of reasons: valuation, wider adoption of AI, an advantage in power generation,” Mohit Kumar, Jefferies’ global macro strategis...

A federal judge must reconsider the possible national security implications of halting construction of President Donald Trump’s $400 million  White House ballroom , an  appeals court  ruled on Saturday. A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it did not have enough information to decide how much of the project can be suspended without jeopardizing the safety of the president, his family or the White House staff. The case was returned to the trial judge who,  in a March 31 ruling,  barred work from proceeding without congressional approval, but suspended enforcement of that order for 14 days. The appeals court extended that for three days, to April 17, to allow the Trump administration to seek Supreme Court review. The panel instructed U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to clarify whether — and how — his injunction interferes with the administration’s plans for safety and security. Government lawyers had argu...

The Trump administration approved major disaster declaration requests for at least seven states this week, according to information released Saturday by the  Federal Emergency Management Agency , allowing affected communities to access federal support. About 15 requests for assistance from others states and tribes for extreme weather events this year and last seem to be pending, along with three appeals of previous denials. Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota and Washington were granted major disaster declarations, which can unlock federal support and funding for recovery needs such as public infrastructure repairs and aid for survivors. The announcement, in a FEMA daily briefing document, comes weeks into Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s tenure overseeing the disaster relief agency and is the latest signal that the former Republican senator from Oklahoma could ease some of the  turmoil from the leadership  of his predecessor, Kris...

Anthropic’s new AI model, Mythos, is causing a stir among cybersecurity experts and policymakers. The company says its new model is so skilled at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s too dangerous to release. Instead, it is limiting access to a small group of major technology companies whose software is the foundation for many other digital services, hoping to give defenders time to strengthen their systems. Anthropic is not the only AI lab producing models with these kinds of capabilities, or considering similar release strategies to try to ensure cyber defenders have access to these systems before hackers do. OpenAI is reportedly preparing a new model—internally known as “Spud”—that could match Mythos in cybersecurity capabilities. According to a report from Axios, the company is also working on an advanced cybersecurity-focused system that it plans to release in a phased rollout to a small group of partners, again to try to give defenders a head start. Some ...

The missiles may eventually stop for good. Oil tankers will once again pass through the Strait of Hormuz. But even if the tenuous two-week ceasefire gives way to a lasting end to hostilities, the world economy that emerges from the Iran War will bear little resemblance to the one that entered it. That is the conclusion of investors, economists, and strategists around the world. The common thread isn’t fear of a specific catastrophe. It’s something more unsettling: the sense that a series of permanent structural shifts—in supply chains, in geopolitical alliances, in the balance of economic power—have been accelerated by a war that nobody in power fully planned for. “It’s going to look fundamentally different for a while, no matter what,” said Steve Hanke , professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University. He summed up the new world order to be defined by the winners and losers of this unfolding disaster in three statements: “Good for Russia, good for China, bad for America.”...