“Asking ‘will AI replace the artist’ is the same as asking ‘will the camera replace the artist’”, argues @aleximas.bsky.social in the latest instalment of his excellent series of essays on the societal impact of AI. And the answer is No—quite the contrary: buff.ly/4pJiZ71

New post: "Someday We Will All Be Artists" How will AI impact art? Will artists be replaced? No. Art will change, but art makers will be most "automation proof" jobs out there. In fact, many jobs will take on characteristics that we associate with artists. aleximas.substack.com/p/someday-we...

I wrote up some (late) predictions for 2026, mostly as a way to guide my own thinking and priorities. Overall: 2026 is the year we will finally see real visible societal changes in response to AI. Discuss 3 reasons: agents, recursive science, continual learning. open.substack.com/pub/aleximas...

New post: What is the impact of AI on productivity? I review all of the studies and data that I can find and try to provide a synthesis. A disagreement emerges: micro studies find positive benefits but these benefits are yet to show up in the macro data. aleximas.substack.com/p/what-is-th... 🧵

Does this reflect "discrimination"? We can't test this directly. But we think it's likely that there is systemic discrimination by socioeconomic background in academia (Following the very useful framework by Bohren, @instrumenthull.bsky.social @aleximas.bsky.social (20/22)

GPT-5.2 Pro is good enough to check reproducibility & robustness of academic papers across many fields (given the data, can you get the same results? are the statistics brittle?). I wouldn't trust it to automate decisions, but to flag them. It can't do an independent replication with new data, yet.

Some news: I’ve started a Substack, largely focused on AI, tech, and economics more broadly. I've always loved the essay format. It helps me explore ideas more formally w/o the 5 year publishing gauntlet. Consider subscribing: open.substack.com/pub/aleximas... Links to all posts below:

Thaler & Imas (@aleximas.bsky.social ; @rthaler.bsky.social): The Winner's Curse I've read a lot of JDM (pic 2 related) and figured this would be a nice review of behavioral econ. It was that, but also such a great presentation w/ plenty I'd never seen- and I'm a sucker for anyone who praises Simon

have only read the first 1/4, but this by @aleximas.bsky.social looks very interesting on the range of conditions under which unemployment due to automation would lead to demand collapse

Thoughtful thread by @aleximas.bsky.social on the potential of AI-driven automation for disrupting the labour market, and how to anticipate it: buff.ly/PWYhkap

I think spot on and applies elsewhere; in volume-driven/time-constrained areas the competitive advantage of AI can make it an strategic necessity even if the new equilibrium is worse for everybody.1/ by Leonardo Bursztyn, @aleximas.bsky.social @rafaeljjd.bsky.social Aaron Leonard & Christopher Roth

I'm excited to share access to a video of the conversation @angeladuckworth.bsky.social & I hosted at Wharton w/ our brilliant friends @rthaler.bsky.social & @aleximas.bsky.social about their new book THE WINNER'S CURSE & how behavioral econ has evolved in the last 30 years. youtu.be/hH8UgQb-x4A?...

it was so much fun to host @rthaler.bsky.social and @aleximas.bsky.social @upenn.edu for a conversation about The Winner’s Curse and the evolution of behavioral economics. missed it? check out the recording on the @bcfginitiative.bsky.social youtube channel! youtu.be/hH8UgQb-x4A

Behavioral Economics, Then and Now: A Conversation With @aleximas.bsky.social — behavioralscientist.org/behavioral-e...

[email protected] and @aleximas.bsky.social teamed up to update The Winner's Curse, a landmark book in behavioral economics. In doing so, they chart where behavioral economics began, where it is now, and where it could go next. behavioralscientist.org/behavioral-e...

Happy pub day to THE WINNER'S CURSE by @rthaler.bsky.social + @aleximas.bsky.social! The original (1992) version of this book changed my life -- it's the reason I study judgment and decision making. For a preview of the new edition, check out my Q&A w/ the authors t.co/n3ThOxpJak

Next was a great discussion with @aleximas.bsky.social and Richard Thaler on changing perspectives around behavioral economics anomalies at the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy & Finance www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v8O... (6/7)

ONE WEEK! The Society for Neuroecon conference is in Cambridge, MA in 1 week! We are thrilled to have @amberalhadeff.bsky.social and @aleximas.bsky.social as the speakers for our neuroscience and social/decision science workshops neuroeconomics.org/workshops/

‼️Event Alert‼️ Join @angeladuckworth.bsky.social & @katymilkman.bsky.social for a conversation with Nobel Prize winning economist @rthaler.bsky.social and Professor @aleximas.bsky.social about their new book, The Winner’s Curse. 📅 Thurs, Oct 23 | 4-5PM 📍 Huntsman Hall G06 📩RSVP: bit.ly/4nbI9EG

Why do students lie about using AI? Chicago Booth's @aleximas.bsky.social talks about perceptions of AI use in the classroom. www.chicagobooth.edu/review/podca... #econsky

#QJE Aug 2025, #2, “Systemic Discrimination: Theory and Measurement,” by Bohren, Hull (@instrumenthull.bsky.social), and Imas (@aleximas.bsky.social): doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Congrats to all faculty who have been recognized for their stellar contributions! We're especially thrilled to celebrate the eleven Chicago Booth faculty on this list, among them CAAI Faculty Affiliate @aleximas.bsky.social! news.uchicago.edu/story/twenty...?

Paper by @aislinnbohren.bsky.social @instrumenthull.bsky.social and @aleximas.bsky.social on Systemic Discrimination now published in QJE academic.oup.com/qje/article/...

AI can be overconfident. So a team of researchers came up with a solution: Give AI a way to evaluate and calibrate its own uncertainty, allowing a user to decide how much to trust a prediction. www.chicagobooth.edu/review/how-a...

The gutting of US biomedical research with loss of ~2,500 grants affecting research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious disease, global health and much more www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

"You need some way of actually measuring people’s beliefs or their preferences if you wanna test these behavioral stories around bubbles," says Chicago Booth’s Leland Bybee. www.chicagobooth.edu/review/in-it... #econsky #ai

Our work now published showing how better AI can improve both accuracy and diversity in hiring relative to supervised learning tools and status-quo human hiring.

The interesting thing about people dragging the folks in that NYT piece who said that they didn’t vote for moms to get deported is that the article is about how these women are organizing for a member of their community, aggressively and openly, and actually, that’s good.

Update on the paper: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mit-...

Introspection has gotten a bad rap over the years. Here we show that people have more insight into the algorithms behind their decisions than we tend to assume. Thrilled to see this work out at Nature Comms with the always brilliant @thatadammorris.bsky.social!

This is cool for, like, other people who have actually used AI... not me, nope.

🚨New paper (link in reply)🚨 Are we underestimating AI use in self-report surveys? Yes, by as much as 30 percentage pts. We find 60% self-reported vs. truth closer to ~90% (!!) Why? Social desirability bias, people embarrassed/worried to admit AI use, so they underreport 🧵

Yes, Bluesky is full of ill-informed AI takes. But that doesn’t have to matter at all. The news you need is out there. In addition to the filters recommended here, I recommend … +

Encourage your students to submit posters and register! Limited free housing is provided for student participants only, on a first-come (i.e., request)-first-serve basis. We are also actively looking for sponsors. Reach out if you are interested! Please repost! Help spread the words!

Just so it’s clear, the government wanted to oversee hiring and employment at a *private* institution in order to implement a purity test. When the institution refused, they took away money for life saving research (cancer etc). That’s some fascist shit.

The algorithm knows me better than I know myself

The profession really benefits from having Ivan in it

At Passover Seder yesterday, the host asked “what makes people slaves”. His 5 year old son said “money, because then you have to sit there counting it all day instead of having fun.” People mostly laughed, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

The Formulator Force is the 80s rebrand of total factor productivity.

Promised my kid that I had saved all my amazing transformer toys at his grandparent’s house. Opened the box only to find this: Wtf is a formulator force. It also broke the second I touched it. Tears were shed.

This post seems to have struck a chord in some circles, more views in the first couple of days than anything else I've written: open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

I will be the first to admit that Econ 101 misses many important factors in the real world. But in case of tariffs, these real world factors (eg fragility/interdependence in supply chain networks, consumer sentiment) only make the consequences even *worse*.

The issue, as always, is getting people to click and engage. We have more knowledge freely accessible than any time in human history. Full MIT courses on literally everything, thu click of a button. Are people more educated now than before? (no)

chag pesach sameach, everyone

YOU MOTHERFUCKER I WAS LITERALLY 15 MINUTES AWAY FROM PUBLISHING AN ARTICLE NOW I HAVE TO RUN THE ANALYSIS ALL OVER AGAIN TOOK YOU TEN DAYS TO REMEMBER WHAT A SMARTPHONE WAS AND GIVE TIM APPLE HIS BRIBERY EXEMPTION, MEANWHILE YOU STILL HAVEN'T FUCKING EXEMPTED BANANAS

Important null results in development economics Despite the bias against publishing null results, they are important for policy, helping to kill bad ideas. I've highlighted some key examples we have featured on @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/import...

What is a recent #EconSky economics paper that has a core result that is 1. Important 2. Surprising (sign or size) 3. Decently simple Self nominations r welcome.

Would also add: Reasoners excel in STEM because of large amount of training data with very similar content. Reasoners still continue to fail in STEM when faced with new content (see recent results on 2025 Math Olympiad questions). arxiv.org/abs/2503.21934

Despite being hugely influential in psychology and more widely, there is minimal formal work exploring whether and why the contact hypothesis is true. We provide a model based on "coarse thinking" and apply it to discriminatory policing.

Huge huge kudos to @anthropic.com for releasing this detailed overview of how students are using AI. Some pretty concerning trends here, such as students completely off-loading higher-level reasoning to LLM and mostly prompting for direct answers. www.anthropic.com/news/anthrop...