Introducing the 2025 AI advent calendar
It’s been two years since I last created an AI advent calendar, a stretch of time that feels like a lifetime given the pace of progress in large language models and AI more broadly. Back then, I used the then-current version of ChatGPT and the first iteration of DALL·E—the image generation tool where you had to purchase tokens on the go.
This time, I’m using GPT-5.0. Rather than producing short stories based on images, I’ve asked the AI to generate 24 short essays on economic theories and concepts, each roughly 600 words. A typical prompt might be something like: “Write an essay about [topic] in 600 words.”
I quickly discovered the need to be specific. GPT loves bullet points and excessive bolding, so I had to explicitly instruct it to avoid both. I also standardized a referencing format to ensure consistency across essays. In some prompts, I provided detailed context to steer the AI in a particular direction; in others, I left it more open-ended.
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December 24 - Merry Christmas
I want to thank everyone for bearing with me in my AI advent calendar project this year. I know it probably isn’t to everyone’s taste. But it was a fun project, and it helped me get better acquainted with AI, which will becoming an increasingly inevitable force to be reckoned with in 2024, for all of us , for better or worse. I am going to spend a few days over Christmas in Denmark with my wife, who is from Canada, and my extended family. I asked ChatGPT 4 to come up with a picture capturing that mood.
Have a break Christmas break and a Happy New Year!
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December 23 - Chat GPT 4 in action, on Eurozone inflation
This year’s advent calendar project was primarily done on ChatGPT 3.5 and DALL E2. I only recently acquired access to GPT 4.0, which is infinitely more powerful, especially in its ability to respond to real-time events—it is trained on current data—to create more detailed and realistic pictures and, as I will show here, to analyse data. So, I thought that I would pivot on this entry and show an example of some empirical and statistical economic analysis I’ve done with GPT 4.0.
The first step was to create my own GPT optimised for time series analysis done on data uploaded in excel or CSV format. This didn’t take long, though it is not clear to me that my little GPT is any better than the generic "Data analysis” GPT, but over time, it should become better at the task that I am interested in, in theory.
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December 22 - The Siege of Sancerre
The Sancerrois had defended their town valiantly. Artillery and bombs had been pounding the walls of the city early in the occupation, but to little effect. The enemy had suffered more so than the villagers during these attacks, despite the menacing presence of canons, explosives, slings and other war machinery. But the success of repelling enemy advances would soon give way to despair and destitution. The siege became a slow poison, seeping into the very bones of the town.
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