Why does low unemployment no longer lift inflation?
The Phillips curve, the logic of which guides central banks today, has become oddly flat
![](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20200822_SBD001_0.jpg)
EVERY NIGHT at about 10pm the lights of the prisoner-of-war camp in Indonesia would mysteriously dim, to the puzzlement of the Japanese guards. They failed to spot the makeshift immersion heaters, used to brew cups of tea for the inmates, that had been cobbled together by a prisoner from New Zealand, William Phillips. These secret contraptions were just one example of his resourcefulness.
This article appeared in the Schools brief section of the print edition under the headline “A flattened curve”
More from Schools brief
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AI needs regulation, but what kind, and how much?
Different countries are taking different approaches to regulating artificial intelligence
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LLMs will transform medicine, media and more
But not without a helping (human) hand
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How AI models are getting smarter
Deep neural networks are learning diffusion and other tricks
The race is on to control the global supply chain for AI chips
The focus is no longer just on faster chips, but on more chips clustered together
AI firms will soon exhaust most of the internet’s data
Can they create more?
A short history of AI
In the first of six weekly briefs, we ask how AI overcame decades of underdelivering