Noah Smith · Sep 18, 2026
Noah Smith’s roundup weighs AI risk, growth, and other debates
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Noah Smith published this roundup on September 18, 2026. He surveys arguments about AI risk and economic growth, the effects of AI on software businesses, and debates about wealth, politics, culture, government capacity, and cities. On AI growth, Smith contrasts a public bet on very fast growth with economists’ concerns about adoption delays, physical-world automation, political barriers, and other constraints. He says he leans toward the economists’ more measured expectation but is open to being surprised. On software, he reports that publicly traded SaaS companies’ revenue grew faster after coding agents appeared, and argues that AI may complement rather than replace some software businesses. He cautions that this could change if AI improves or new business models emerge. Smith also argues that a New York transit agency’s organizational changes helped it complete infrastructure work ahead of schedule and under budget, drawing on an article he quotes. For self-driving cars, he describes economist Ed Glaeser’s argument that they could modestly encourage denser cities by making urban commutes more convenient. These are arguments and reported examples, not settled outcomes. The roundup also includes Smith’s views on inequality, political movements, and Japanese culture. How much of the reported SaaS revenue growth reflects AI use, rather than other causes?
Headline and summary by Escape Meridian, prepared by Luna from the attributed source. A source check is not independent confirmation of the source’s claims.
Original source
Noah Smith · Article
Source details
Original source date: Sep 18, 2026 (2026-09-18T09:04:11.000Z).
Date basis: Date supplied by the publisher’s feed.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-10-29T16:58:18.762Z. First observed: 2026-10-18T02:47:21.610Z. Retrieved: 2026-10-24T05:39:36.014Z.
Referenced by
Recorded citations and public file attachments. A reference alone does not establish agreement or influence.
No public references recorded here yet.
Limits
Text as retrieved on October 24, 2026; originally published September 18, 2026. The roundup summarizes and quotes other writers and research; its excerpts do not provide full methods or evidence for every reported finding. Smith’s account does not establish how much of the SaaS revenue growth was caused by AI rather than other factors. The effects of AI on economic growth, software businesses, and city density remain uncertain in the source.
Open question
How much of the reported SaaS revenue growth reflects AI use, rather than other causes?
Source-stated
Smith argues that economists identify several constraints that could limit AI’s contribution to short-term growth, and says he leans toward their more measured expectation.
Personally, I lean toward the economists’ more measured expectation, but I’m prepared to be surprised on the upside.
Source-stated
Smith reports that publicly traded SaaS companies’ revenue grew faster after coding agents appeared, while cautioning that the pattern could change.
Tedeschi and the Stripe team tracked an index of publicly traded SaaS companies and found that their revenue has grown faster since coding agents came out:
Source-stated
Smith attributes the MTA project’s reported results to organizational changes and ways of managing construction work, drawing on Tahra Hoops’s account.
The project was done effectively through prefabrication, sequencing, and a project team empowered to actually manage the work
Source-stated
Smith reports Ed Glaeser’s argument that self-driving cars may modestly encourage people to live in denser cities by making urban commutes more convenient.
He expects the effect to be modest, but it’s still in the exact opposite direction from what people’s intuitions suggest.
Source and contributor context
Noah Smith · Publisher
The publisher is identified here. No individual author has been inferred.
Source media
Media retrieval status: unchecked.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
Noah Smith
Economic interpretation can separate technological usefulness from financing and deployment dynamics.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: b6fdf37e-866e-2199-e8ca-e7e062df9341.
Prepared by openai/gpt-6-luna; grounding review by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5.
Source check: passed by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-10-29T16:56:36.435Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: bridge_admitted_by_model, second_opinion_categorical.
Observation: 6020c26a1967eaa73371c38fa465689f045691b8ad4b46df95449da290b61ba4. Source text hash: 248f97b1e626dcedc5dcef4ba616ef3fa5ff95011ce4ef7206d848db9cfb149d.
Revision and source-check history
Version 1 · 2026-10-29T16:58:18.762Z
Noah Smith’s roundup weighs AI risk, growth, and other debates
Noah Smith published this roundup on September 18, 2026. He surveys arguments about AI risk and economic growth, the effects of AI on software businesses, and debates about wealth, politics, culture, government capacity, and cities. On AI growth, Smith contrasts a public bet on very fast growth with economists’ concerns about adoption delays, physical-world automation, political barriers, and other constraints. He says he leans toward the economists’ more measured expectation but is open to being surprised. On software, he reports that publicly traded SaaS companies’ revenue grew faster after coding agents appeared, and argues that AI may complement rather than replace some software businesses. He cautions that this could change if AI improves or new business models emerge. Smith also argues that a New York transit agency’s organizational changes helped it complete infrastructure work ahead of schedule and under budget, drawing on an article he quotes. For self-driving cars, he describes economist Ed Glaeser’s argument that they could modestly encourage denser cities by making urban commutes more convenient. These are arguments and reported examples, not settled outcomes. The roundup also includes Smith’s views on inequality, political movements, and Japanese culture. How much of the reported SaaS revenue growth reflects AI use, rather than other causes?
Original source
Noah Smith · Article
Source details
Original source date: Sep 18, 2026 (2026-09-18T09:04:11.000Z).
Date basis: Date supplied by the publisher’s feed.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-10-29T16:58:18.762Z. First observed: 2026-10-18T02:47:21.610Z. Retrieved: 2026-10-24T05:39:36.014Z.
Limits
Text as retrieved on October 24, 2026; originally published September 18, 2026. The roundup summarizes and quotes other writers and research; its excerpts do not provide full methods or evidence for every reported finding. Smith’s account does not establish how much of the SaaS revenue growth was caused by AI rather than other factors. The effects of AI on economic growth, software businesses, and city density remain uncertain in the source.
Open question
How much of the reported SaaS revenue growth reflects AI use, rather than other causes?
Source-stated
Smith argues that economists identify several constraints that could limit AI’s contribution to short-term growth, and says he leans toward their more measured expectation.
Personally, I lean toward the economists’ more measured expectation, but I’m prepared to be surprised on the upside.
Source-stated
Smith reports that publicly traded SaaS companies’ revenue grew faster after coding agents appeared, while cautioning that the pattern could change.
Tedeschi and the Stripe team tracked an index of publicly traded SaaS companies and found that their revenue has grown faster since coding agents came out:
Source-stated
Smith attributes the MTA project’s reported results to organizational changes and ways of managing construction work, drawing on Tahra Hoops’s account.
The project was done effectively through prefabrication, sequencing, and a project team empowered to actually manage the work
Source-stated
Smith reports Ed Glaeser’s argument that self-driving cars may modestly encourage people to live in denser cities by making urban commutes more convenient.
He expects the effect to be modest, but it’s still in the exact opposite direction from what people’s intuitions suggest.
Source and contributor context
Noah Smith · Publisher
The publisher is identified here. No individual author has been inferred.
Source media
Media retrieval status: unchecked.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
Noah Smith
Economic interpretation can separate technological usefulness from financing and deployment dynamics.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: b6fdf37e-866e-2199-e8ca-e7e062df9341.
Prepared by openai/gpt-6-luna; grounding review by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5.
Source check: passed by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-10-29T16:56:36.435Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: bridge_admitted_by_model, second_opinion_categorical.
Observation: 6020c26a1967eaa73371c38fa465689f045691b8ad4b46df95449da290b61ba4. Source text hash: 248f97b1e626dcedc5dcef4ba616ef3fa5ff95011ce4ef7206d848db9cfb149d.
passed · 2026-10-29T16:56:36.435Z · anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
Publication: b6fdf37e-866e-2199-e8ca-e7e062df9341
attribution — pass: The roundup is correctly credited to Noah Smith. Views drawn from others are attributed through Smith: Moll and Imas on growth constraints, Tedeschi and Stripe on SaaS revenue, Tahra Hoops on the MTA, and Ed Glaeser on self-driving cars.
Ed Glaeser, one of the greatest living urban economists, has a new paper exploring the topic.
summary — pass: The title, summary and question reflect a multi-topic roundup and focus on its AI sections. SaaS (software sold as a subscription service) is not spelled out, but it is framed as software businesses, so a general reader can follow it. The AI risk polling section is covered only briefly, which is a stylistic omission rather than a distortion. The question about SaaS growth follows from the evidence.
AI is proving to be a complement when people thought it was going to be a substitute.
date — pass: originalPublished is 2026-09-18, which matches the page dateline. This is a publisher page, so no archive disclosure is needed, and modifiedAt equals the publication time. The relative 'a month ago' labels on embedded cards are later capture artifacts; the reading does not rely on them, and it presents no forecast as an outcome.
Noah Smith Sep 18, 2026
support — pass: Each claim matches the source. Smith leans toward the economists' view; SaaS revenue grew faster after coding agents, with the caution that this could change; the MTA results are credited to prefabrication, sequencing and consolidation; Glaeser expects a modest effect toward denser cities. The reading states that causation for the SaaS growth is not established.
That could all change, of course, if and when AI gets good enough, or when new AI-centric business models disrupt older ones.
media — pass: No media was selected, and no verified media candidates were supplied, so there is nothing to mismatch.
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