The word “weird” didn’t always mean strange. In Old English, descended from a mix of Germanic and Norse concepts, it meant something closer to “destiny” or “becoming” or even “fate.” Once upon a time, human beings in that culture thought that the way someone’s life would turn out was unseverable from the fundamental weirdness of being alive.
William Shakespeare’s MacBeth is known for its three witches, who popularized the “double, double, toil and trouble” line, often misquoted from its appearance in a Disney cartoon as “bubble, bubble.” But what’s often forgotten is that Shakespeare named these characters the “Weird Sisters,” connecting them to another mythological group of three old crones: the Norns from Scandinavian mythology, who together weaved a web of destiny called (what else?) the “wyrd,” containing every human’s life story. (J.K. Rowling later named a popular band in her Harry Potter universe “The Weird Sisters,” but that was an all-male lineup.)
The weirdest thing of all in economics, says Brandeis University Economics Professor Benjamin Shiller, is that weirdness is closely tied to fate in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The weirder you are, he tells Fortune, the better off you’ll be.
“AI models can learn stuff really well but only with a massive amount of training data as humans are much more efficient learners,” Shiller says. “If you have a niche field where there’s not a lot of data out there to train an AI model, then AI probably won’t displace your job.”
Goldman Sachs predicts that 300 million jobs in the U.S. and Europe could be susceptible to some level of change because of AI, predicting that humans could go the way of the workhorse in the modern economy. However, Shiller’s “weirdness premium” suggests a cheat code to gaming AI’s takeover: find a job that’s so complex, not even trillions of tokens of data can replace it.
AI doesn’t learn as efficiently as humans … yet
Shiller describes what Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently suggested regarding the sheer volume of information required to replace a human skill. The businessman posted in a reply on X (formerly Twitter) “Roughly 10 billion miles of training data is needed to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving.”
“If a typical American drives about 13,500 miles per year, that’s about 750,000 years of a person driving that they need for training data,” Shiller said. In contrast, it takes the average human just a few hundred driving miles and six months of practice to secure their driver’s license.
Of course, self-driving cars already exist, and can easily get people from point A to point B free of harm. Yet if it takes that much data for an AI to learn a task as simple as driving, then it could take a massive amount of data to automate niche professions, such as that of an aviation accident analyst or an industrial ride engineer. In other words, in fields where data is scarce, humans retain a comparative advantage.
Humans are better equipped at handling kangaroos
Shiller illustrates AI’s limitations with “the kangaroo example,” a cautionary tale of when Waymo tested its self-driving cars in Australia. The vehicles failed to navigate a bizarre and foreign obstacle: jumping marsupials. “They just basically kept on crashing into kangaroos because kangaroos weren’t in their training data and their movements were different [from] other animals’ movements.”
AI fails to predict the unknown, and that failure is what differentiates humans from even the most advanced machines. “For a human, we’re able to adapt and deal with these edge cases without being specifically trained to handle them,” Shiller said. We’re naturally apt at handling niche scenarios, from the unpredictability of the road to the chaos of a hospital or an investment bank.
Shiller says that modern workers—and young people contemplating a degree—should avoid being caught in a profession that everyone else is doing. “Just taking the standard classes and becoming well-versed in what you’re directly taught in these large majors is a risky strategy,” Shiller said.
As questions swirl over who will replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell when his term ends in May, Jamie Dimon is taking his name off the list of potential candidates.
“Chairman of the Fed, I’d put in the absolutely, positively no chance, no way, no how, for any reason,” the JPMorgan CEO said when asked at a Chamber of Commerce meeting on Thursday if he’d ever consider the role. “I would so much more prefer this job than that job. That’s a hard job, but I don’t want to do that job,” he later added.
“Hard job” may be an understatement given unprecedented pressures on the Fed since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Last Friday, the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve and Powell’s testimony on the renovation of Fed office buildings. The probe follows a year of increased pressure on the central bank from the Trump administration to lower interest rates.
In August, the president attempted to unseat Fed governor Lisa Cook over alleged mortgage fraud, the first time a president has fired a sitting governor in the central bank’s 112-year history. A federal court ruled that Cook could keep her seat while she fights the firing, butCook’s future remains uncertain as the Supreme Court hears the Trump administration’s appeal later this month.
In addition, the Fed faces the tricky task of trying to prop up the labor market by lowering interest rates without reigniting inflation.
Dimon said he would consider being Treasury secretary if asked, but he’s hesitant to take a job working under someone else.
“I would take the call, consider it, and think about why and what they want. But what they want and how they want to operate would be important to me,” Dimon said. “But I’ve been my own boss for pretty much 25 years, and I like it that way.”
This is not the first time Dimon’s name has been mentioned as a potential cabinet secretary. In 2024, then President-elect Trump announced that Dimon would not be in his administration after speculation that he would be nominated for Treasury secretary. Dimon agreed that he wouldn’t be the best fit, saying “I’m not about ready to start” having a boss again.
Earlier this week, it seemed that Dimon and Trump were at odds after Dimon warned chipping away at the central bank’s independence “is not a good idea.”
Trump later called Dimon out, saying “Jamie Dimon probably wants higher rates. Maybe he makes more money that way.”
On Thursday, Dimon reiterated his opposition to interfering with the Fed’s independence because “it will drive rates higher not lower,” but said he and Trump were on the same page.
“Everyone I know, including the president of the United States, says we need an independent Fed board,” Dimon said. “Most people I know, including the president of the United States, speak up about their opinion, which they’re free to do.”
Dimon and other CEOs such as Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser did just that this week after Trump called for a one-year 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Dimon said that would limit access to credit and adversely affect people who lower credit credits.
“If it happened the way it was described, it would be dramatic,” Dimon said, speaking to analysts during the earnings call on Tuesday. “It would be dramatic on subprime.”
Good luck trying to wash your hands, your face, your hair with snow; there’s not nearly enough of it to do all that. Vail Resorts is lowering its expected 2026 earnings after some of the lowest snowpack in recorded history has cratered visits at its North American locations by nearly 20% since the start of the season through January 4.
Skiers staying home is taking its toll: Vail’s ski school revenue has dropped 14.9% since the start of the season compared to last year, and dining revenue fell nearly 16%, the company said in an investor statement released yesterday.
Just how dry is it? A rare polar vortex and La Niña combination dumped record amounts of snow on the East Coast this year…while starving everywhere else. The company said snowfall during November and December at its Rocky Mountain locations was down almost 60% compared to the area’s historical 30-year average. Western US resorts were faring only slightly better, with 50% less snowfall than average.
On Tuesday, Vail Mountain reported its worst snowpack since it started keeping records in 1978, with just 4.4 inches.
Only about 11% of Vail Resort’s terrain in the Rocky Mountains was open last month.
Zoom out: The wipeout comes amid the return of CEO Rob Katz, who revolutionized the ski business by consolidating resort ownership and introducing the Epic Pass, after years of the company faltering financially without him in the C-suite.—MM
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We are often told that setting the bar high is key to success. After all, if you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you’ll land with the stars. But Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang wants privileged Gen Z grads to lower their expectations.
“People with very high expectations have very low resilience—and unfortunately, resilience matters in success,” Huang said during an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations.”
Indeed, as the billionaire boss pointed out, those at elite institutions like Stanford probably have higher expectations for their future than your average Joe.
The university is one of the most selective in the United States—it ranks third best in the country, according to the QS World University Rankings, and the few students who get picked to study there are charged more than $68,000 in tuition fees for the premium, compared to the average $38,270 per annum cost.
But, unfortunately for those saddled with student debt, not even the best universities in the world can teach you resilience.
“I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you,” Huang added.
Huang overcame adversity to succeed
Huang’s advice for America’s next-gen elite comes from a place of experience: His life now is a world away from his childhood, which was, by his own admission, steeped in adversity.
The tech genius—who with a net worth of $155 billion is one of the world’s wealthiest people—was born in Taiwan in 1963 and spent the bulk of his early life in Thailand, before moving to the U.S. at 9 years old.
His serendipitous Stateside move came after his dad, who worked for an air conditioner manufacturer, did some training in the country and set his sights on the American Dream.
“I was fortunate that I grew up with my parents providing a condition for us to be successful on the one hand,” he said. “But there were plenty of opportunities for setbacks and suffering.”
One example of Huang’s hardship was his daily high school experience: The teenager had to cross a dangerous footbridge with missing planks over a river to get to his public school in Kentucky, where he was then relentlessly tormented.
“The way you described Chinese people back then was ‘Ch-nks,’ ” Huang previously told the New Yorker, adding that bullies even tried to toss him off the bridge.
In the Stanford interview, he also credited his success and work ethic with his first job at Denny’s, where he was the “best dishwasher” before getting promoted to busboy and giving that his “best” also.
“I never left the station empty-handed. I never came back empty-handed. I was very efficient,” Huang added. “Anyways, eventually I became a CEO. I’m still working on being a good CEO.”
Coincidentally, it was at Denny’s where he cooked up the idea for a company that specialized in computer chips to render graphics, over a Super Bird sandwich with his friends Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. The trio went on to cofound Nvidia, and the rest is history.
‘I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering’
For those fortunate enough to never have personally experienced hardship growing up, Huang doesn’t have any advice on how to welcome more of it into your life now. But he did have some advice on embracing tough times.
“I don’t know how to do it [but] for all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering,” Huang said. “Greatness comes from character and character isn’t formed out of smart people—it’s formed out of people who suffered.”
It’s why despite Nvidia’s success—the company has a $2 trillion market cap—Huang would still welcome hardship at his organization.
“To this day I use the phrase ‘pain and suffering’ inside our company with great glee,” he added. “I mean that in a happy way because you want to refine the character of your company.”
Essentially, if you want your workforce to always be on their A game, don’t let them rest on their laurels.
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on March 13, 2024.
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