iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ultimately, our future won’t be figured out only in AI labs. It will require tinkerers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers who can see a bit ahead. We need the next generation to think deeply about how to make the future good. I'm excited to see what my students build.

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I did make all my students build demos—and they were great. I was impressed by how even nontechnical students made use of AI tools to build creative projects. The accompanying blog post shares a few! We were also grateful for a visit from @sebk.bsky.social

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We think through how abundant intelligence might affect jobs, markets, and governance. There’s not much hard data—so we also use theory and thought experiments. Many of our laws and institutions were designed for human intelligence. We consider how they might be rethought for AI.

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AI makes traditional policy school assignments trivial, so I make students agree what to create. This year, technical students suggested software demos. Opposed: all who had never coded. That debate helped us understand how people feel when a new technology upends their lives.

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The institutions AI will need: notes from class

In my class on AI institutions, the first assignment was to fight over what the assignments should be. That resulted in chaos--which was the lesson. AI will disrupt many parts of society. My class asks: what do we build next? 🧵 danbjork.substack.com/p/the-instit...

danbjork.substack.com

Teaching AI futures at Columbia University

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Dan Björkegren @dbjork.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

AI labs are releasing great data on how AI is affecting the jobs of knowledge workers. But we have almost no data on how it's reaching the world's poorest. New post: statistics the labs could release next week, and what we'd learn. dan.bjorkegren.com/blog/2026/04...

dan.bjorkegren.com

(How) do the poorest use AI?

Frontier AI labs have begun publishing remarkably detailed reports on how their products are used. Reports from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft have documented not only overall usage, but also ins…

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Dan Björkegren @dbjork.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Some AI+econ opportunities coming up: 1. Schmidt Sciences grants up to $200k www.schmidtsciences.org/ai-at-work/ 2. Microsoft AI economy grants $75k www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear... 3. UChicago AI in social science conference bfi.uchicago.edu/events/event...

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Dan Björkegren @dbjork.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

What could it mean? Perhaps open-weight AI models: - Shift who benefits - Induce different investments - Are more likely to lead to extreme outcomes - Or something else I’m trying to make sense of it, so thoughts are very welcome! Paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2512.14969 (3/3)

arxiv.org

Market Beliefs about Open vs. Closed AI

Market expectations about AI's economic impact may influence interest rates. Previous work has shown that US bond yields decline around the release of a sample of mostly proprietary AI models (Andrews...

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Dan Björkegren @dbjork.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Isaiah Andrews and Maryam Farboodi documented the yield decline around mostly proprietary AI model releases in a thought provoking paper. Following closely, I find evidence that markets react differently to open weight model releases–possibly in the opposite direction. (2/3)

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Dan Björkegren @dbjork.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Do markets believe that AI will transform the economy? Interest rates offer a clue. New working paper: I find that long-term bond yields appear to shift in opposite directions after releases of open vs. closed AI models. (1/3)

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Reposted by Dan Björkegren

David Duvenaud @davidduvenaud.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

It's hard to plan for AGI without knowing what outcomes are even possible, let alone good. So we’re hosting a workshop! Post-AGI Civilizational Equilibria: Are there any good ones? Vancouver, July 14th www.post-agi.org Featuring: Joe Carlsmith, @richardngo.bsky.social‬, Emmett Shear ... 🧵

post-agi.org

Post-AGI Civilizational Equilibria Workshop | Vancouver 2025

Are there any good ones? Join us in Vancouver on July 14th, 2025 to explore stable equilibria and human agency in a post-AGI world. Co-located with ICML.

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David Rothschild @davmicrot.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

🚨The Agentic Economy🚨 new paper w/ 9 co-authors: what happens to economy with expanded agent use for both consumers & businesses? The architecture of agentic communication will determine extent to which generative AI democratizes (or restricts) access to economic opportunity arxiv.org/abs/2505.15799

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Reposted by Dan Björkegren

Maximilian Kasy @maxkasy.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

🤖 Interested in machine learning, economics, and the state of AI?🤖 In September, I will teach a 1-week intensive version of my course on foundations of ML (maxkasy.github.io/home/ML_Oxfo...) in our summer school. Apply here: ouess.web.ox.ac.uk/september-su... Spread the word!

maxkasy.github.io

Foundations of Machine Learning

Research on machine learning, experimental design, economic inequality, and optimal policy

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Reposted by Dan Björkegren

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 14/04/2025

This is alarming. The US president is personally stating plans to remove people he personally deems to be "home-grown terrorists" to indefinite imprisonment overseas The same prison where he claims authority to send *anyone*, in secret and without criminal charges or opportunity for appeal

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Reposted by Dan Björkegren

Reid Hoffman @reidhoffman.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Very important research. AI is better & cheaper for communities that don't yet use the web –– meaning it can unlock exponential gains for entire countries.

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The research conducted with my students at Columbia Jun Ho Choi, Divya Budihal, Dominic Sobhani, and chatbot creators Oliver Garrod and Paul Atherton

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This is together with the excellent folks at Fab Inc who created the chatbot and are coordinating work at AI-for-Education.org. Also @educaid.bsky.social in Sierra Leone

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AI can reformat knowledge to work better on small screens and costly, intermittent connections. Can it help catch up remote, low-income communities to the revolution of information?

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Also, search results are low quality. Only 2% of results were from in-country. We asked teachers to rate responses, without telling them how the response was generated. Teachers rate AI responses as more helpful, relevant, and correct than web search results.

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Because querying an AI is 3,107x more data efficient, AI is already 87% cheaper than loading a web page for our teachers in Sierra Leone.

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Why don’t teachers use web search? First, because search is slow and expensive. The average web page uses 3,107x more data than the corresponding AI response (!)

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What do teachers use AI for? Mostly for facts and conceptual questions.

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85% of sub-Saharan Africans have mobile broadband signal, but few use the internet. Internet users use WhatsApp—but seldom web search (see plot). We study a GPT-based chatbot accessible through WhatsApp. Sierra Leonean teachers use AI more than web search (leapfrog!)

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Ashesh Rambachan @asheshrambachan.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

New working paper: Could AI leapfrog the web? Only 37% of sub-Saharan Africans use the internet. Cost is the #1 constraint. In a study with 469 teachers in Sierra Leone, we find AI works better than the web--and is 87% cheaper. arxiv.org/abs/2502.12397 Let's dive in... 🧵(1/X)

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Reposted by Dan Björkegren

Applications are open for the Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute (MLESI) 2025 are open! If you're a graduate student, come learn about ML/AI and its uses throughout economics. Apply by March 28. The application and more info can be found here: www.chicagobooth.edu/research/cen...

chicagobooth.edu

Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute 2025 (MLESI25)

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Dan Björkegren @dbjork.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

PhD students: there is a tutorial on AI + digital economics Feb 12 too; apply here www.nber.org/calls-papers...

nber.org

Digital Economics and AI Tutorial

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Dan Björkegren @dbjork.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Love AI and economics? The NBER Digital and AI spring meeting will be at Stanford the day before Valentine's. Two weeks left to send us your best work! ❤️ www.nber.org/conferences/...

nber.org

Digital Economics and AI Meeting, Spring 2025

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We'll be thinking about the future to improve the policies and ventures we build today. The syllabus is here. Are there readings or topics I am missing? Suggestions welcome! dan.bjorkegren.com/syllabus_aii...

dan.bjorkegren.com

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We'll be wrestling with the work of the future, who should train machines, and what values AI should encode. We'll explore whether decentralized minibus networks in Africa can tell us about planning cities for self driving cars, algorithms that bridge rather than divide, and ways to govern.

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The challenge of understanding the impact of AI is grounding forecasts about possibly profound changes. We will base our discussions on first principles of the technology, theories of human behavior, and empirical evidence. We'll develop what Tirole has called 'social science fiction.'

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Much discussion about AI swings into hype or science fiction. It's easy to become unmoored. But most careful empirical studies tell us about marginal changes or the past. How can we understand the futures that are possible?

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New technologies allow--and may require--new ways of organizing society. How might education, economies, and governance be rethought for an AI era? That is the topic of my new course AI Institutions at Columbia SIPA.

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