Arvind's Newsletter

1.US sets visa-processing record amid rising demand from India, appointment wait time down by 75%

The US Embassy and Consulates in India processed a whopping 1.4 million visas during 2023. Appointment wait time dropped by 75% even as the country saw an unprecedented rise in demand for visas across all classes. Indians now represent one out of every ten US visa applicants around the world.

The US government saw a 60% increase in applications over the past year, meeting demand with a three-month staffing surge in Mumbai. New Delhi set a student visa record for the third year in a row with more than 140,000 such documents greenlit in 2023. Indian students have now become the largest group of international graduate students in the US, making up more than a quarter of the over one million foreign students studying in the country.

2.People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before opines MIT Technology Review.

It was 1938, and the pain of the Great Depression was still very real. Unemployment in the US was around 20%. New machinery was transforming factories and farms, and everyone was worried about jobs.

Were the impressive technological achievements that were making life easier for many also destroying jobs and wreaking havoc on the economy? To make sense of it all, Karl T. Compton, the president of MIT from 1930 to 1948 and one of the leading scientists of the day, wrote in the December 1938 issue of this publication about the “Bogey of Technological Unemployment.”

His essay concisely framed the debate over jobs and technical progress in a way that remains relevant, especially given today’s fears over the impact of artificial intelligence. It's a worthwhile reminder that worries over the future of jobs are not new and are best addressed by applying an understanding of economics, rather than conjuring up genies and monsters. Read the full story.

Meanwhile, the hottest job in America is…wait…Executive in Charge of AI.

3.Drone Strike in Jordan

At least three US troops were killed, and at least 25 other US personnel were wounded, after a drone strike hit a remote military post in northeast Jordan yesterday. Officials said the attack, the first in the Middle East to kill American forces since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, was carried out by unspecified Iran-backed militias.  

The strike occurred near al-Tanf, a base sitting a few miles from the Jordan-Syria-Iraq meeting point and lying along the Baghdad-Damascus highway. The base anchors a localised zone outside of Syrian government control, and has served as a launch point for coalition operations against ISIS in the region in recent years. 

In related news, negotiators are said to be closing in on a deal that would see a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip for up to two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 Hamas-held hostages. The majority of those released would be women, the elderly, and those needing medical care—an agreement to return the remaining hostages would be worked on within the first 30 days of the pause in fighting. 

Separately, the Biden administration is said to be considering slowing military aid to Israel in an effort to push the government to seek an end to the conflict.

4.The Seven Laws of Pessimism

Good news is invisible to most of us. Bad news takes precedence. But we live in a world that has never seen better times, writes Maarten Boudry, author and a philosopher of science at Ghent University

“Over the past 30 years, 130,000 people have escaped extreme poverty every day. These people didn’t wake up one morning to discover that they were no longer poor. But some people do wake up to find that they have lost everything because their house has burned down, an invading army has pillaged their town, or a storm has destroyed their harvest.

In any event, those 130,000 people who have escaped poverty are a statistical abstraction, and you can’t interview statistical abstractions on the evening news. To find out about progress, we need to consult statisticians who comb through data and make subtle points with boring graphs. To find out about regression, just switch on the TV.

In addition, since declines in violence and other forms of misery tend to be gradual and imperceptible, while temporary upticks tend to be sudden and abrupt, the latter are more likely to grab media attention.

Good news is at its most invisible when it is simply the absence of bad news, as is often the case. Every day, there are countless disasters that could have transpired but didn’t: planes that landed safely, volcanoes that didn’t erupt, terrorists who failed to strike. But you’ll never see the headline ‘BREAKING NEWS: No traffic accidents, hijackings, or gas explosions in Brussels today.”

5.The growing prioritization of nuclear power across the world makes uranium an attractive investment, according to Goldman Sachs Wealth Management.

The price of uranium has already tripled in the past three years, but “we think there is more to go,” its chief investment officer said on a recent podcast. Plans for expanding nuclear-power capacity in China and restarting plants in Japan, coupled with a broader pledge by more than 20 countries to triple their capacity by 2050 — an effort to curb carbon emissions — is driving demand for the fuel, while the world’s largest producer warned this month of a common shortfall in supply.

6.A proposed bill in California would prevent cars from speeding. Under the legislation, new cars built or sold in the state from 2027 would require an “intelligent speed limiter” that would stop cars going more than 10 mph above the speed limit.The limiter would use GPS to determine the posted speed limit on the road the car is using. 

The law leaves provisions for drivers to temporarily override the limiter, perhaps for overtaking, and would not apply to authorised emergency vehicles. Too-high speeds are judged to be a factor in a third of the 40,000 U.S. annual road deaths.

Cars sold in the European Union and U.K. are required to have speed limiters, although they can legally be switched off.

7.The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology in retail, notes BBC.

“Stores saw this as the next frontier… If they could get the consumer to think that [self-checkout] was a preferable way to shop, then they could cut labour costs. But they're finding that people need help doing it, or that they'll steal stuff. They ended up realising that they're not saving money, they're losing money."”

 “Theft (called ‘shrinkage’ in trade jargon) issue is particularly painful for retailers: “Some retailers cite theft as a motivator for ditching the unstaffed tills. Customers may be more willing to simply swipe merchandise when using a self-service kiosk than they are when face-to-face with a human cashier. Some data shows retailers utilising self-checkout technology have loss rates more than twice the industry average.” Read on