Alex Imas on Why Economists Might Be Getting AI Wrong

Joe Weisenthal (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Tracy, it may have changed a little bit in recent weeks or months, but I think by and large, by and large, like if you talk to economists about the long-term impact of AI, particularly on jobs, by and large, it seems like they point to history, and they say there have been many technologies in the past that people thought were gonna be very disruptive and destroy all kinds of jobs.

And in many cases, they did, but technologies create new jobs. We can't necessarily anticipate them beforehand what they're gonna be. And AI is like kind of no different ultimately.

Tracy Alloway (0:57)

Yes, but then to your point, you ask like, well, what specific jobs do you have in mind? And I get that, you know, it's hard to tell, it's hard to forecast.

Joe Weisenthal (1:05)

Only the invisible hand knows.

Tracy Alloway (1:06)

Right, but it's so frustrating, right? Because here's this big new technology, it's supposed to be a productivity boost, and yet, no one is actually sure what new jobs it's going to create from that productivity boost.

Joe Weisenthal (1:19)

I love him to death, but Adam Osimek wrote a piece several weeks ago, and he was like, well, the player piano disrupted the existence of piano players, but hotels still pay money for a human who will have a piano player, an actual piano player in the lobby rather than a player piano, which is true.

But like, not many people have jobs that are equivalent, and the thing that like, it's like, oh, you know, it's like, I want to get like this insurance form reimbursed or whatever, this insurance reimbursed. Like, I don't care about the human touch vet per se.

Tracy Alloway (1:53)

There's something very-

Joe Weisenthal (1:54)

I'm happy to have the equivalent of the player piano there.

Tracy Alloway (1:57)

There's something very dissatisfying about the idea that we're all just gonna become like performative humans in a way, but I actually think that's kind of where we might be heading, where like the sort of social skills, I've said before the looks maxing, the personal branding, the multitasking, I guess, like becomes more important. So the future is performative humanity.

Joe Weisenthal (2:17)

Open AI just spent a ton of money on TBPN. I really love those guys. They're both very good looking guys, man. So I sort of feel like, okay, this is the biggest AI company in the world, sort of making a bet on these like great characters.

Tracy Alloway (2:30)

Two very nice and charismatic humans.

Joe Weisenthal (2:32)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe that is the future, just being nice and charismatic. Anyway, we need to talk more seriously about this because I don't, I don't know, I kind of feel maybe this is not just going to be like the steam engine or whatever. It might be very different. Maybe we won't have jobs. Maybe there will be new jobs. Anyway, someone who's been talking and thinking a lot about this and why AI might be different, we're going to be speaking.

Really have the perfect guest, Alex Imas. He is a professor of economics and applied AI at University of Chicago. Does a lot of writing on this topic. So Alex, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Alex Imas (3:05)

Thank you for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (3:06)

It's pretty cool that you have the job of a professor of economics and applied AI. It worked out pretty well. It's a good time. You picked a good field.

Alex Imas (3:15)

Yeah. I mean, I've been an economist for much longer than I've been a professor of applied AI.

I have been studying human behavior, human decision making for about 12 years now, more than a decade. And when Chad GPT first came out, I was kind of taken aback. This was a few years ago now. And I was thinking, after about a week of using it, I was like, this is going to be huge for the economy. And so I started talking to people who have kind of, there were several people who kind of knew that it was coming and knew what the impact it was going to have. So I started talking to those people and I kind of quickly kind of started retooling.

Joe Weisenthal (3:51)

That's smart.

Alex Imas (3:52)

I started, I trained my own model. You know, I got into, I got into it. And you know, it's, I've been trying to play catch up ever since.