Derek Thompson
Writer and podcaster; co-author of Abundance with Ezra Klein and a staff writer at The Atlantic from 2008 to 2025.
Derek Thompson did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsDonald Trump is very good at running for president, but he is very bad at being president.
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public debtAmericafiscal policy
Their wordsThe U.S. has an enormous and growing debt that will likely require tax increases in addition to spending cuts.
- 12 days earlier
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Their wordsDespite all the investment in new AI chips, it costs a quarter more to rent older GPUs than it did a year ago. This tells us that demand for AI computing power is growing faster than supply.
↗The AI Story Wall Street Doesn’t Want to Hearderekthompson.org
- 8 days earlier
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Their wordsI am a realist who recognizes that a rapidly improving technology whose output is intelligence is destined to make violent contact with a modern sensibility that prizes human intellect and often equates it with purpose, dignity, and self-worth.
- 7 days earlier
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Their wordsAs a share of the economy, this is the most expensive infrastructure project since the 19th century railroads.
↗The 26 Most Important Facts About AI and the Economyderekthompson.org
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Their wordsThe winners of the AI boom dominate stock market returns in 2026.
↗The 26 Most Important Facts About AI and the Economyderekthompson.org
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Their wordsBut it took AI about three years, making this the fastest-growing technology on record.
↗The 26 Most Important Facts About AI and the Economyderekthompson.org
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAlthough it seems to be based on a perceived difference ("he is rich, and I am not"), it is actually triggered by a feeling of similarity ("if he and I are so alike, why is he so much richer?")
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Their wordsIt's unfair, not only materially, but psychologically. The bad we feel about small disadvantages is greater than the good we feel about small advantages.
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Their wordsThe good news about envy is that it is very often a delusion.
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsThe value of a degree is in question, as tuition costs have increased in the last few decades while the college premium-the expected benefit from getting a diploma-has flatlined and possibly even declined in the last few years.
↗Why Harvard's Dean 'Encourages' Students to Use AIderekthompson.org 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsArtificial intelligence has unleashed a torrent of cheating on campus and created chaos in the job application process, as both students and employers use large language models: the former, to write hundreds of AI-assisted applications; the latter, to screen those AI-written applications with AI-written filters, thus removing from the process of finding a first job those procedural frictions sometimes known as "people."
↗Why Harvard's Dean 'Encourages' Students to Use AIderekthompson.org 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsJudging by their words, AI luminaries are begging the world to force them to hit the brakes. Judging by their work, these same people are pressing down on the accelerator with every fiber of their being.
- 9 days earlier
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Their wordsThe act of writing is an act of thinking, and to automate our paragraphs is to populate our screens with words without filling our minds with the ideas necessary to conceive of them.
↗We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internetderekthompson.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Bots will soon make up nearly all internet traffic, leaving little human activity online.
Their wordsI think it's not long before 99% of internet traffic is bots.
↗We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internetderekthompson.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThere is a good argument that AI writing will be as good as human writing, possibly even surpass human writing within the next decade.
↗We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internetderekthompson.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 13 days earlier
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Their wordsThe first is that new AI models have the know-how to escape containment in testing environments, which should challenge any assumption that advanced AI can be easily controlled by its makers.
↗How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypsederekthompson.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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LLMsAnthropicOpenAIcybersecurity
Their wordsAn analysis by the AI Security Institute found that the capabilities of frontier models (i.e., from OpenAI and Anthropic) are roughly doubling every few months, and this doubling rate has actually gotten faster over time.
↗How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypsederekthompson.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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LLMsopen sourceHuggingFacecybersecurity
Their wordsBy 2027, almost every country-and every non-state group with sufficient computing power-will have the ability to download open-weight models even more powerful than the ones that attacked Hugging Face and use them for whatever they like.
↗How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypsederekthompson.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 days earlier
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Their wordsAmerican sports laws amount to a kind of out-in-the-open conspiracy to help a lucky few billionaires get much, much richer
↗The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshitderekthompson.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsMajor sports leagues are de facto cartels with the power to block entry and competition.
↗The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshitderekthompson.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordseconomic research has repeatedly found that they rarely generate enough marginally income, employment, or tax revenue to justify the subsidy.
↗The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshitderekthompson.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 days earlier
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the clouddata centersinfrastructure
Their wordsThis is the biggest and fastest-growing infrastructure project of our lifetimes.
↗The Great American AI Rebellionderekthompson.org 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThe fastest-growing political movement in America is dead-set on stopping the construction of data centers, which are critical to the growth of the fastest-growing industry in America.
↗The Great American AI Rebellionderekthompson.org 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsit's not out of the question that Anthropic or OpenAI-which barely had any revenue before 2023-could equal or surpass the revenue of all of Musk's public companies some time in the next 12 to 24 months.
↗The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilizationderekthompson.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThe long-term risk for Hollywood is that an age of original blockbusters raises the bar for success.
↗The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilizationderekthompson.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsCombined with Nietzsche's observation, I think you could argue that moderns are both more selfish and more guilt-stricken than our ancestors.
↗The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilizationderekthompson.org 3rd of 3 in this piece