Here is why I’m worried about AI-driven labor disruption and why I think economists should fight for a seat at the policy table.

TL;DR: AI is general purpose tech, disruption can happen at diff scale than before. Step back, let ‘er rip and analyze later may be disastrous.

1/n Nearly everyone actually working in AI agrees that the tech will have major labor market disruptions, on a scale not seen before. Even if you don’t believe in AGI, you don’t need much model improvement for tech to have major impact as orgs learn to use it. 2/n

https://x.com/polynoamial/status/1994439121243169176?s=20

@R_Thaler and I wrote a book about behavioral economics

You should get it if you:
- Want to learn where BE started, how far it’s come, and where (we think) it’s going
- Teach BE (comes w/ slides+materials)
- Curious about replicability (we replicated main studies)

🧵w/ links You may be thinking, I've seen/read the Winner's Curse before.

Original contained @R_Thaler's Anomalies columns for JEP.

The new book has ~2/3 new content. 2/n

amazon.com/Winners-Curse-…

I’ve heard this comment several times in replies, so let me explain why Marx’s labor theory of value has no empirical content i.e., no observable inputs/outputs for testing or prediction. But is still conceptually useful as means of thinking about power in systems of exchange 🧵

https://twitter.com/ygzgzot/status/1970620073275740363

In Capital Vol 1, Marx build’s on Ricardo’s theory of value, stating that the value of commodity is proportional to the “socially necessary labor time” required for its production.

I think the issue is the "nudge" movement has misunderstood the point of the original "libertarian paternalism" paper and the "nudge" book. Original works argued that seemingly irrelevant factors can have an impact on behavior when *a set of conditions are met*🧵

https://twitter.com/JohnHolbein1/status/1933872486237815224

The original work *did not* argue that any seemingly irrelevant factor would have a huge effect everywhere. You first had to do a ton of research to see if a nudge was appropriate in the first place. Want to test a salience intervention for taxes? First make sure people are inattentive to them. What to test a reminder intervention? Make sure that imperfect recall is a problem in the setting!

There is a field experiment showing this exact effect. Introducing GPT tutors increases performance by *a lot*--students seem to be picking up the material much faster--but when GPT is removed those who had access perform *much worse* compared to those w/o access. 1/4

https://twitter.com/lxeagle17/status/1899979401460371758

Brings question: what do we want students to learn in our classes? There is an argument that students will always have access to GPT, so assignments should allow access.

But another view is that the class is not just teaching material, but how to *think* through problems. 2/4