Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Write yourself coz you do it best!

It's sad that people perfectly capable of expressing their thoughts in English on platforms such as LinkedIn are still letting AI write for them. It's understandable when it's complex thoughts that need connecting and structuring to deliver a coherent message. But often it is plain content generated based on a broad idea. It's often just reluctance to put in the time and effort.

And AI with its typical articulation styles does well to leave its mark - talking in abstractions, giving fundas in third person instead of stating directly, telling us what something is not before telling us what it is, telling us what something happens to be rather than being something else, and so on. The patterns are so easily visible now that AI generated content has become difficult to read and follow. If LLMs really learnt from the best human-written text, why did these patterns emerge? It's possible they'll be gone in future versions, and perhaps they are already being handled to some extent in paid versions, but these patterns are sticky and persistent.

Yet, it's not just about the language and patterns. The beauty and power of thought sharing lies in its originality and genuine human articulation. After experimenting a fair bit with content from LLMs, I strongly believe they can't express like we do, and we do it the best. And we should do it when we can, instead of letting them do it for us and settling for something that we'd rather done better.

Friday, September 18, 2026

Kevin Warsh and the US Fed

It used to be a treat listening to Jay Powell speak and convey the policy stance - felt like someone did their homework well and had a view on how he'd score in the test. Even the inability to predict often sounded reasonably justified given the craziness all around. When I listened to Kevin Warsh last night, the hawkishness aside, it didn't feel like much was said except for - here's a 25 basis-points hike and that all's good.

It was rightly pointed out by many that the rate-hike doesn't target any of the prevailing supply-side disruptions, although that's not within the remit of the Fed. However, what's concerning is that Kevin has taken this position of not offering any guidance, projection or opinion about the future trajectory. The views of the individual FOMC members were indeed made public, but they don't all align. An integrative stance by the regulator is more helpful. If a major actor in the market - with access to more information and analyses than most other participants - processes all the information, but refuses to offer views or guidance or even commentary that is of some insight, market efficiency is deliberately impeded. Yet the same actor, among a few others, sets the stage for the market to perform. Policy makers aren't expected to take a purely responsive stance towards the markets, while their actions create the conditions for market movement. They certainly feed into each other, but a regulator is supposed to bring in support, sanity and centrality, while the dispersed markets pursue their own interests.

Millennials have had the best deal!

The weather this morning was quite pleasant. And as I was cycling through Pune roads early this morning, I had a pleasant realization. We mi...