What we’re reading (5/23)
“Stocks Slide, Dow Suffers Worst Day In A Year As Nvidia Fails To Spur Market Rally” (Yahoo! Finance). “Stocks slid from record levels on Thursday as interest rate worries dominated investor sentiment after Nvidia's (NVDA) blockbuster earnings failed to spur a broader market rally.”
“FTC Chair: AI Models Could Violate Antitrust Laws” (The Hill). “‘The FTC Act prohibits unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices,’ Khan said at the event. ‘So, you can imagine, if somebody’s content or information is being scraped that they have produced, and then is being used in ways to compete with them and to dislodge them from the market and divert businesses, in some cases, that could be an unfair method of competition.’”
“Top PE Funds See Mediocre Returns As Exits Slow” (Institutional Investor). “For funds between seven and nine years old, ‘half of the stated asset value consists of unsold deals that are ‘marked to market’ by the private equity managers,’ according to a study by Jeffrey Hooke, a senior finance lecturer at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School who focuses on the alternative asset class.”
“Redefining The Scientific Method: As The Use Of Sophisticated Scientific Methods That Extend Our Mind” (PNAS Nexus). “Scientific, medical, and technological knowledge has transformed our world, but we still poorly understand the nature of scientific methodology. Science textbooks, science dictionaries, and science institutions often state that scientists follow, and should follow, the universal scientific method of testing hypotheses using observation and experimentation. Yet, scientific methodology has not been systematically analyzed using large-scale data and scientific methods themselves as it is viewed as not easily amenable to scientific study. Using data on all major discoveries across science including all Nobel Prize and major non-Nobel Prize discoveries, we can address the question of the extent to which ‘the scientific method’ is actually applied in making science's groundbreaking research and whether we need to expand this central concept of science. This study reveals that 25% of all discoveries since 1900 did not apply the common scientific method (all three features)[.]”
“Should Governments Crack Down On Fake Job Postings?” (Dealbreaker). “While the details vary, ghost jobs fall into one of two categories. The first are advertised job openings although employers have no intention of actually hiring anyone. Companies do this to project an image that they are growing, to placate overworked employees, gauge salary demands in order to determine whether to give existing employees raises, or to have a list of people who may be available in the future. The second type of ghost jobs are those that have requirements that are so strict and specific that only a few people will be eligible. Usually this is the case where the company has already selected who they want to hire internally but is required to make the job opening public due to legal requirements (although this requirement only seems to apply for federal contracting jobs) or contractual requirements such as a collective bargaining agreement. These job postings are also suspected to automatically reject unemployed candidates and instead target people who are already employed and want to leave their current job.”
