Tyler Cowen Explains Why He Is Proceeding With an Interview of Yiyang Zhuge (Zhong Shu)
Key Takeaways
- •Tyler Cowen is proceeding with an interview of Yiyang Zhuge despite complaints from readers over plagiarism accusations against the Chinese intellectual.
- •Cowen argues the plagiarism allegations are disputed, unfolded in Chinese, and involve standards that differ between China and the United States.
- •Cowen has previously hosted controversial guests including Sam Bankman-Fried, now a convicted felon, and convicted murderer Shaka Senghor.
- •Cowen compares the Zhuge case to hosting DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfang, noting DeepSeek's known distillation of Anthropic's Claude violated terms of service.
- •Cowen says his main criterion for guests is whether they are interesting to talk to rather than their conduct record.
Many people have been writing in, upset that Tyler Cowen is interviewing Ziyang Zhuge, a well-known Chinese internet intellectual who was recently accused of plagiarism. Cowen, the George Mason University economist who runs the Marginal Revolution blog and the long-running interview series Conversations with Tyler, is keen to proceed with the interview, and offers several points to explain why. The episode sits at the intersection of a recurring question for the series: what standard of conduct should a guest meet before being considered worth interviewing?
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The relevant facts here are still being disputed, and furthermore the matter played out entirely in Chinese. If Cowen cannot personally adjudicate the matter, he remains inclined to proceed. He is also well aware that standards in China, including for plagiarism, are very different from those in the United States. If someone tells him "A person in China did [fill in the blank]," his initial reaction is still "Are they interesting to talk to?"
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Cowen has hosted numerous CEOs and business leaders. Readers' opinions of each will vary, but surely some of them are guilty of something. He does not regret any of them as guests, except insofar as they were boring. One can also debate whether a former CIA head, in this case John Brennan, ever did anything wrong. He was fascinating.
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Cowen once hosted Sam Bankman-Fried, now a convicted felon. It was an excellent episode, and Cowen points out that his lines of questioning were more perspicacious than many people have since realized.
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He also once hosted a convicted murderer, Shaka Senghor. It was an excellent episode, and if he recalls correctly, only a single person wrote in to complain. He would gladly have more criminals on, and they do not all have to be repentant in the manner that Shaka is. Would a pickpocket guest not be intriguing? For Althusser, however, it is too late.
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Without knowing the full story, Cowen suspects the case of Yiyang Zhuge (neither a felon nor a murderer) is most analogous to hosting the CEO of DeepSeek, Liang Wenfang. At this point it is pretty well known that DeepSeek (and other Chinese AI models) distilled a lot from Anthropic's Claude — that is, used the rival model's outputs as training data to replicate its capabilities. That is a violation of terms of service, and in economic terms it is an event and a depredation of pretty serious magnitude. Cowen would still be delighted to have Liang Wenfang on the show, and would do so without obsessing over the issue of distillation. How about it, Liang Wenfang?
Xi Jinping is welcome too. Chairman Mao, is pork belly with red sauce over- or underrated? The world awaits your response.
Source: Marginal Revolution
