Noah Smith

Smith grew up in Texas and studied physics in college, then was an economics Ph.D. student at the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a university founded in Detroit in 1817 that moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1837; it is governed by a statewide-elected Board of Regents and also has campuses in Dearborn and Flint.Open the full entry; he lived in Japan for three years.⁠[1]

Smith was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University and later an economics columnist for Bloomberg Opinion; he left BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry in late 2021 to blog full time.⁠[1][2][3]

On September 8, 2017, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released the a16z Podcast episode “Adjusting to Trade… and Innovation,” hosted by a16z editor Sonal Chokshi, in which Smith and EconTalk host Russ RobertsRuss RobertsRuss Roberts is an American economist, the founder and host of the economics podcast EconTalk, president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.Open the full entry discussed the history of trade and the Industrial Revolution, trade and technological innovation, trade between rich and poor countries including China, and trade deficits.⁠[4]

In the episode Smith said: “We’re really talking about the part of trade they don’t teach in Econ 101.” Discussing trade and innovation, he asked: “If it doesn’t save us labor, why are we doing it?”⁠[4]

Since late 2021 Smith has written Noahpinion full time. He calls it “my newsletter blog,” readable on the web and in the Substack app; it mainly covers economics and sometimes technology, geopolitics and culture, publishing about five posts a week, three free and two paywalled.⁠[1]

On August 4, 2025, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) released the episode “Dwarkesh and Noah Smith on AGI and the Economy” (titled “Dwarkesh PatelDwarkesh PatelDwarkesh Patel is a podcast host and author who hosts the long-form interview show Dwarkesh Podcast, covering fields such as artificial intelligence, technology, history, and economics. He began making the podcast in 2020 while in college, was named to the TIME100 AI list in 2024, and compiled and published The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025 with Gavin Leech.Open the full entry and Noah Smith on AGI and the Economy” on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry). a16z general partner Erik TorenbergErik TorenbergErik Torenberg is a tech entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he invests and is responsible for marketing and the ecosystem network. He was the first employee of Product Hunt and founded or co-founded On Deck, Village Global, and Turpentine, long combining founder communities, expert content, and early-stage investing.Open the full entry was joined in the studio by Smith and Dwarkesh Patel, host of The Lunar Society podcast. The episode page describes Smith as a “commentator and author of the Noahpinion Substack.”⁠[5][6]

Framed by the question “what exactly is artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how close are we to achieving it?”, the episode covers competing economic, cognitive and “godlike” definitions of AGI, whether reasoning alone is enough and which capabilities models still lack, whether AI substitutes for or complements human labor, growth projections, universal basic income (UBI), sovereign wealth funds and space-colonizing robots in an AI-saturated economy, and AGI’s effects on global power, geopolitics and work, as well as failed predictions and surprising limitations of AI.⁠[5]

On August 20, 2025, a16z released the episode “Oren CassOren CassOren Cass is an American economic policy writer, the founder and chief economist of the think tank American Compass, and the author of The Once and Future Worker, a book on the American labor market.Open the full entry & Noah Smith Debate the True Impact of Tariffs,” in which Smith appeared with Oren Cass, founder and chief economist of American Compass, and a16z general partner Erik Torenberg. Debating “Do tariffs help rebuild American manufacturing or hold it back?”, they discussed tariff-driven reindustrialization versus free-market approaches, the role of allies in trade policy, what the numbers show about manufacturing jobs, investment and output, and what it would take to bring more production back to the United States.⁠[7][8]

Noahpinion: Official website: https://www.noahpinion.blog/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Noahpinion (opens in a new window).⁠[3]