The "interesting statistics" part of the rubric below my blog title has perhaps been ignored a tad recently. So, to put that right... Some dishes are called a trio (of say lamb, or desserts). Well here's a trio of pieces inspired by statistics that caught my eye.
Racism by Machine
I was reading recently about how many first round job interviews are now carried out by AI. So, as many applicants CVs will have been generated by AI, we are in a circular competition of the bots. However, there are problems. Candidates report that the process is soulless and they don't get any feedback or sometimes any response whatsoever and are just "ghosted". But it's worse than that. University of Washington researchers used real CVs but varied names associated with white and black jobseekers in AI recruitment systems and found that the AI favoured the white-associated names 85% of the time. Female-associated names were picked only 11% of the time. "If we're not careful, AI will just automate discrimination at scale". They also found that AI interviewers trained on datasets dominated by American speakers could be biased against different accents, non-native English speakers or individuals with disabilities that affected their speech. "Candidates... can be ruled out regardless of [their] skills...reinforcing existing workforce inequalities".
I'm waiting for the first legal case of discrimination to be taken against a company which was using AI for recruitment, or other employment related processes. It wouldn't surprise me if the first such case was taken out by a law firm using AI to generate its cases.
Meanwhile we all carry on playing games and viewing videos on our phones, the modern equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.
The significance of the dollar as the world's reserve currency
I've long known that the dollar is the predominant currency for currency transactions around the world. But I didn't realise that the dollar is used in 88% of global forex transactions. Nearly every commodity is priced in dollars. This simple fact is one of the main reasons for the USA's enduring financial strength and resilience. It also gives the USA the platform to bully/impose order/sanction miscreants (delete as appropriate). It is undoubtedly a big part of the strength and influence of the West on the world.
The dollar's overwhelming position as the world's reserve currency is coming under threat by the USA's long term shift to being utterly spendthrift - one expected it of the Democrats but not the Republicans - but that is now being amplified by President Trump's economic "policies". China, Russia and probably quite a few other countries would much prefer to conduct business without recourse to dollars. The so called BRICS countries are making some progress towards that end. But it seems to me that the seeds of the fall of the West are already there to be seen and are of the West's own making.
The implications of falling birth rates
Tom Calver, who writes a fact rich column in the Sunday Times titled Go Figure, recently reviewed a book called After the Spike: The Risks of Global Depopulation. The book's central premise is that we are on the upper left side of a gigantic population spike. In about 50 years we will reach the peak and then humanity will start shrinking. And shrinking fast. The cause is simple. Nearly every country is on a downward fertility trend. To maintain the same population size the average woman must have two children, the review said. (Actually it must be a bit higher. It was generally reckoned to be about 2.1 depending, I guess, on infant mortality rates).
The stat that caught my eye was that, while western Europe has struggled to reach that number for some time, every other country now has the same problem. In India, the world's most populous country (interesting quiz question that, many people guess China) the average woman has 1.98 children. And that ratio is falling. The comment that really caught my eye was as follows: "No country in the world has managed to consistently increase its birth rate once it has fallen below this rate".
Unless the trajectory changes the world's population will peak at about 10 billion in the 2070s or 2080s, then fall back to about 8 billion by 2150 and - if we continue at this rate - be around a mere two billion people by 2350.
Many of our current environmental problems are caused by there being simply too many people. But the shape of this population spike has huge implications for humanity. One of the big issues with a smaller global population is a declining rate of innovation. Calver gives an example: had the global population been 10 million, not 1.4 billion, in the 1870s the chances of the light bulb being invented would have been considerably smaller.
Birth rates have been pushed back up briefly in some western countries, including in America where, between 1976 nd 2007 it grew from 1.7 to 2.1 despite increased reproductive rights and more women entering the workforce. But these examples have proved temporary.
Nevertheless, Calver thinks the authors have exaggerated the nature of the spike. It only looks like a spike if we "zoom out". In real time he calls it more of a gentle hill. He reckons we need to find a way of getting the number back up to 2 by 2125. Which gives plenty of time for plenty of bright people to work on it.
But, of course, surely there's going to be AI to do that for us?
No, I wouldn't rely on that either. But the seeds of humanity's downfall, not just the West, are perhaps coming into view.
Interviewed by a bot: how AI is ruling the jobs market. Sunday Times 22 June 2025.
I've read the stat about the predominance of the dollar in global transactions in several places, but I saw it most recenty in Irwin Stelzer's brilliant American Account column in the Sunday Times.
Calver's review of After the Spike by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso was in the Sunday Times on 6 July 2025
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