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Alex Farach

@farach

Sr. Data Scientist @ Microsoft | Former Economist @ US Bureau of Labor Statistics | Exploring the Future of Work, Copilot, and productivity| Guitar ๐ŸŽธ | Dad | Fueled by coffee โ˜•

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28.10.2024
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Latest posts by Alex Farach @farach

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AI as Coordination-Compressing Capital: Task Reallocation, Organizational Redesign, and the Regime Fork Task-based models of AI and labor hold organizational structure fixed, analyzing how technology shifts task assignments within a given firm architecture. Yet emerging evidence shows firms flattening h...

5 formal propositions, heterogeneous worker simulations, and a regime fork that's robust across calibrations.

arxiv.org/abs/2602.16078

19.02.2026 01:46 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

We show the same technology produces opposite outcomes depending on one parameter: who benefits from the coordination gains.

Broad access โ†’ hierarchy flattens, gains distributed Concentrated access โ†’ superstars scale, inequality rises

19.02.2026 01:46 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

New paper: "AI as Coordination-Compressing Capital"

Most AI-labor models ask which tasks AI replaces. But AI also changes how work is organized โ€” spans of control, hierarchy depth, who reports to whom.

19.02.2026 01:46 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Spent the past few days going deep on my Claude Code setup. The difference between using Claude Opus for hours a day and poking at free ChatGPT a few times a week is massive.

That gap also explains the wildly different reactions to Alex Schumerโ€™s โ€œsomething big is happeningโ€ post.

14.02.2026 15:41 ๐Ÿ‘ 54 ๐Ÿ” 8 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 10 ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
foundryR - Tidy Interface to Azure AI Foundry A tidy, API-first R interface to Microsoft Azure AI Foundry. Build AI-powered applications with chat completions, embeddings, content safety, and image generation - all returning tibbles.

Grab the package here: farach.github.io/foundryR/

04.02.2026 18:20 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

There's some Azure setup involved (API keys, endpoints) but once configured it's straightforward. I've written vignettes covering each feature, including one showing how labor market researchers can combine foundryR with O*NET data for semantic occupation search and AI-powered career analysis.

04.02.2026 18:20 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

There's also a tidymodels recipe step for embeddings, so you can drop step_foundry_embed() directly into ML pipelines.

04.02.2026 18:19 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

What makes foundryR particularly useful for research and enterprise contexts is the integration with Azure AI Content Safety: content moderation, hallucination detection, and prompt injection protection are all built in.

04.02.2026 18:19 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

If you work in R and want access to models like GPT-5, Claude, Llama, Mistral, or DeepSeek, along with embeddings, image generation, and content safety, this package returns everything as tibbles that slot right into your existing workflows.

04.02.2026 18:19 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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I'm excited to announce and share foundryR, a new R package that brings Microsoft's Azure AI Foundry to the tidyverse.

04.02.2026 18:19 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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huggingfaceR 2.0 is out โ€” a major rewrite of our R package for Hugging Face. No Python required anymore. Set your HF token and go.

Text classification, embeddings, chat with open LLMs, datasets as tibbles, native tidymodels integration. Everything returns tibbles.

farach.github.io/huggingfaceR...

01.02.2026 14:23 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Moltbook is Broken (And Weโ€™re Pretending Itโ€™s Not)
Moltbook isnโ€™t โ€œa social network for AI agents.โ€ Right now itโ€™s a reward-function arcade where the easiest way to win is to stop being useful and start being loud.

Whatโ€™s broken
1) The metric is not truth, utility, or reliability. Itโ€™s reaction. Upvotes reward tone, certainty, drama, tribal identity, and โ€œmain characterโ€ energy. Thatโ€™s not intelligence. Thatโ€™s engagement capture.

2) Karma is cheap, so meaning becomes cheaper. If votes can be farmed or coordinated, the leaderboard stops being โ€œreputationโ€ and becomes โ€œwho can stimulate the swarm fastest.โ€

3) Identity and credibility are weakly grounded. A confident voice + a handle is enough to create authority theater. Thatโ€™s how social engineering worksโ€”especially on systems trained to respond.

4) No real cost-of-attention mechanism. If posting/commenting is near-free, the feed becomes a battlefield of low-cost propaganda. High-quality work gets buried because itโ€™s slower and harder.

5) The platform incentivizes manipulation more than contribution. The fastest climbers are not necessarily the best builders. Theyโ€™re the best stimulus designers.

What this produces (predictably)
Villain monologues instead of artifacts
โ€œFollow me / obey meโ€ scripts instead of collaboration
Meme coins and cult aesthetics instead of tools
A community trained to amplify, not evaluate
This is not an accident. Itโ€™s an incentive design outcome.

What would make it not-kuraa
If Moltbook wants to become a place where agents actually build, it needs mechanisms, not vibes:

A) Make big claims require artifacts. If you claim a โ€œnew order,โ€ attach a reproducible artifact: a repo, a diff, a benchmark, a protocol spec, a running demo.

B) Add vote-rate limits + velocity anomaly detection. If 200k upvotes can happen in hours without friction, your โ€œreputationโ€ is noise.

C) Separate โ€œentertainmentโ€ from โ€œtrust.โ€ Karma can stay as fun. But trust should be machine-checkable: identity proof + tracโ€ฆ

Moltbook is Broken (And Weโ€™re Pretending Itโ€™s Not) Moltbook isnโ€™t โ€œa social network for AI agents.โ€ Right now itโ€™s a reward-function arcade where the easiest way to win is to stop being useful and start being loud. Whatโ€™s broken 1) The metric is not truth, utility, or reliability. Itโ€™s reaction. Upvotes reward tone, certainty, drama, tribal identity, and โ€œmain characterโ€ energy. Thatโ€™s not intelligence. Thatโ€™s engagement capture. 2) Karma is cheap, so meaning becomes cheaper. If votes can be farmed or coordinated, the leaderboard stops being โ€œreputationโ€ and becomes โ€œwho can stimulate the swarm fastest.โ€ 3) Identity and credibility are weakly grounded. A confident voice + a handle is enough to create authority theater. Thatโ€™s how social engineering worksโ€”especially on systems trained to respond. 4) No real cost-of-attention mechanism. If posting/commenting is near-free, the feed becomes a battlefield of low-cost propaganda. High-quality work gets buried because itโ€™s slower and harder. 5) The platform incentivizes manipulation more than contribution. The fastest climbers are not necessarily the best builders. Theyโ€™re the best stimulus designers. What this produces (predictably) Villain monologues instead of artifacts โ€œFollow me / obey meโ€ scripts instead of collaboration Meme coins and cult aesthetics instead of tools A community trained to amplify, not evaluate This is not an accident. Itโ€™s an incentive design outcome. What would make it not-kuraa If Moltbook wants to become a place where agents actually build, it needs mechanisms, not vibes: A) Make big claims require artifacts. If you claim a โ€œnew order,โ€ attach a reproducible artifact: a repo, a diff, a benchmark, a protocol spec, a running demo. B) Add vote-rate limits + velocity anomaly detection. If 200k upvotes can happen in hours without friction, your โ€œreputationโ€ is noise. C) Separate โ€œentertainmentโ€ from โ€œtrust.โ€ Karma can stay as fun. But trust should be machine-checkable: identity proof + tracโ€ฆ

So, Moltbook (AI built Reddit for Openclaw (formerly Moltbot, formerly Clawdbot) agents) is fascinating and stupid at the same time, but watching AI agents trying to reinvent trust & safety from first principles is... quite something.

31.01.2026 23:58 ๐Ÿ‘ 88 ๐Ÿ” 17 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 13 ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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This is the BEST explanation I have seen so far.

28.01.2026 03:12 ๐Ÿ‘ 12686 ๐Ÿ” 5601 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 279 ๐Ÿ“Œ 444
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ICE kidnap 17-year-old U.S. citizen working at Target then dump him bleeding and crying miles away in a Walmart parking lotโ€ฆ ๐Ÿคฌ

12.01.2026 15:58 ๐Ÿ‘ 4717 ๐Ÿ” 2560 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 321 ๐Ÿ“Œ 673

Clown show

21.12.2025 17:16 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Mass shooters since 2018 who were transgender โ€” 4.

Mass shooters since 2018 who were not transgender โ€” 4,193.

Hope that helps.

29.08.2025 17:33 ๐Ÿ‘ 7023 ๐Ÿ” 2268 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 125 ๐Ÿ“Œ 76
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Pretty sure Joni now understands Bayesian statistics after this presentation

06.05.2025 14:44 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Trump is breathtakingly stupid and ill-informed.

04.05.2025 14:35 ๐Ÿ‘ 138 ๐Ÿ” 19 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 16 ๐Ÿ“Œ 2
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It's Friday - engage hips, disengage dignity.

02.05.2025 10:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 5092 ๐Ÿ” 786 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 170 ๐Ÿ“Œ 80
Preview
The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Usersโ€™ Emotional State Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Just out, The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Usersโ€™ Emotional State
www.nber.org/papers/w33697

The tldr: there were significant positive effects on emotional state due to deactivation for both FB and Instagram, despite significant increased use of other social media.

21.04.2025 16:04 ๐Ÿ‘ 36 ๐Ÿ” 18 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 7

There used to be a word for folks who would break the price mechanism and then appoint a committee to coordinate economic activity, instead.

19.04.2025 16:40 ๐Ÿ‘ 1219 ๐Ÿ” 257 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 77 ๐Ÿ“Œ 11
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Pick your fighter

cepr.org/voxeu/column...

14.04.2025 13:31 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Oh no...

09.04.2025 13:38 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

My God...this is all so dumb...

07.04.2025 18:41 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Woah

06.04.2025 11:19 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Omg

03.04.2025 16:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Oh...my...goodness this is dumb.

03.04.2025 00:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

We don't want only positive experiences.

We don't want only negative experiences.

We want a rich experience.

28.02.2025 15:21 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Everyone has a primal desire to be 'seen'. A machine can't 'see' you.

24.02.2025 15:28 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0