Dan Björkegren

Welcome Johan!

AI & the Future of Human Capital in the Global South: A World Bank-George Washington University Knowledge Symposium How AI-driven innovations can help address critical human capital challenges in low-income and lower-middle income countries. Call for papers: Submissions due to July 18

Working on AI and human capital in low income countries? Submit to this symposium at the World Bank / GWU www.worldbank.org/en/events/20...

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.

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 ... 🧵

🚨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

Foundations of Machine Learning Research on machine learning, experimental design, economic inequality, and optimal policy

🤖 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!

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

bsky.app/profile/dbjo...

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.

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

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

Could AI Leapfrog the Web? Evidence from Teachers in Sierra Leone Access to digital information is a driver of economic development. But although 85% of sub-Saharan Africa's population is covered by mobile broadband signal, only 37% use the internet, and those who d...

We’re working on the question: how can we build information services for the 2.6 billion people underserved by the web? If you’re interested, reach out.
Working paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2502.12397

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?

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.

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.

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 (!)

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

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!)

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)

Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute 2025 (MLESI25) <span id="docs-internal-guid-53f97f20-7fff-b55c-c89c-4f85d663a48c" style="color: #39393a;"><span style="color: #000000;">MLESI<span id="docs-internal-guid-394e21c4-7fff-1437-16ff-fdbb1ce1d34c" style="...

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...

What Is Quantum Mechanics?: A Physics Adventure Buy What Is Quantum Mechanics?: A Physics Adventure on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

I haven't read their quantum book but I love the Fourier book so I expect it's also good www.amazon.com/What-Quantum...

Digital Economics and AI Tutorial

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

Digital Economics and AI Meeting, Spring 2025

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/...

Congratulations!!

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...

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.

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.'

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?

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.

Also @joshgans.bsky.social @emollick.bsky.social @susanathey.bsky.social

I haven't used it but Premise seems to be used for price data collection like this