Ioana Marinescu

As
@KordingLab
and I argue, it is much cheaper to replace humans in the intelligence than in the physical domain. #AI

Meet your new robot fry cooks: Inside the $28 billion race to disrupt White Castle and Jack in the Box | Fortune Miso Robotics’ Flippy slung chicken tenders and Tater Tots at Dodger Stadium, and CEO Rich Hull has bigger ambitions for the tech.

Everyone's excited about robot fry cooks. But here's what I told @fortune.com: the question isn't whether we can automate restaurant kitchens — it's whether it's worth it economically.
Robot hardware costs are declining far slower than AI software costs. fortune.com/2026/02/26/r...

Resilient by Design: Dual Safety Nets for Workers in the AI Economy — Digitalist Papers How can we respond to the impact of transformative AI on the labor market? In this essay, Ioana Marinescu sets out a two-tiered response, recognizing the immense uncertainty about what lies ahead: “ad...

For the longer version: my Digitalist Papers essay proposes two complementary policies:

1️⃣ AI Adjustment Insurance
2️⃣ Digital Dividend; a scalable cash benefit starting small but ready to grow if needed.

Flexible tools for an uncertain transition.

🔗 digitalistpapers.com/vol2/marinescu

UK minister floats UBI to cushion AI job losses. I weighed in Fortune. My take: we need safety nets that scale with uncertainty. But will AI's winners support redistribution once they've won?
🔗 fortune.com/2026/02/01/elon-musk-optional-work-fantasy-universal-basic-income-uk-minister-jason-stockwood

How do "widgets" fit into our services-based economy? Widgets are a general stand-in for any produced good. But how do we think about widgets when goods are only a fraction of what we produce?

“In my mind, I see like little marbles or something,” Marinescu said. “It's like, plop, plop, plop, plop. Widget, widget, widget, widget.”
That's my very smart quote in this @marketplace.org episode about productivity measurement #EconSky
www.marketplace.org/story/2025/1...

The impact of AI on the labor market seen through the computational neuroscience lens 👇. Our Brookings paper is now posted on SSRN.

Welcome to #ASSA2026 in my home town! Please say hi if you see me in the corridors 😊! I look forward to seeing some of you tonight at the LERA research panel & reception w. Jared Bernstein @ericagroshen.bsky.social @darrickhamilton.bsky.social #EconSky

Digitalist Papers

I am honored to be part of The Digitalist Papers, Volume 2 (www.digitalistpapers.com), 21 essays exploring the implications of the transformative economic power of artificial intelligence, setting the stage for change comparable to the Industrial Revolution but with far greater speed and scope.

How can we respond to the impact of transformative #AI on the labor market? In this Digitalist Paper, I propose: AI “adjustment insurance” (AI-AI) to help workers with transitory job losses, and a “digital dividend” to support those permanently without work. www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/marinescu

Got my @econ5k.bsky.social T-shirt, #EconSky, and you should too if you're an econ runner! I hope to see you in Philly in January #ASSA2026 sites.google.com/view/econ5k/...

Your truly on Musk’s post-work society prediction. fortune.com/2025/11/20/e...

Good morning, chilly Amherst! Looking forward to my talk today on #AI saturation & the future of work, and to seeing dear colleagues & meeting new ones! #AcademicLife

It's a wrap on the AGI Journalism Workshop in D.C., co-hosted with the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

▸ AGI timelines, jobs, misalignment, U.S.–China policy & regulation
▸ @hlntnr.bsky.social, @akorinek.bsky.social, @imarinescu.bsky.social, @gleave.me, @alexbores.nyc, @deanwb.bsky.social + more

Takeaways:
👉#AI returns saturate if physical lags
👉Wages often rise & fall as intelligence automates
👉Wage declines require shrinking intelligence-job share
👉Policy: pace deployment + invest in physical capacity; don’t bet on a “singularity”

Result 4 (simulation). Here we simulate adding more AI, during and after automation. (1) Wage effects of adding more AI saturate. (2) Higher substitutability between physical and intelligence can lead to wage declines during automation but allows for unbounded wage growth post-automation.

Result 3 (simulation):when intelligence and physical are more substitutable, automation of intelligence has a larger positive effect on output.
➡️What’s better for workers’ wages is worse for output, trade-offs.

Result 2 (simulation): when intelligence and physical are more substitutable, automation of intelligence has a more positive wage effect early on but a more negative effect later.
➡️Cautionary tale, early wage gains may not persist!

Result 1: as automation of intelligence by #AI progresses, output increases and there’s an increase in the share of workers in the physical sector \beta (i.e., in person work, including e.g. cooking, teaching and surgery).

Model: Output is produced with intelligence and physical sectors (CES), each powered by humans and capital (AI is the capital in the intelligence sector). Labor optimally reallocates between physical and intelligence to maximize wages.

Is intelligence saturation plausible?
(1) More intelligent people are not proportionately more successful.
(2) Adding more scientific researchers yields lower and lower additional output
(3) Prior tech (ICT) revolution had limited growth impacts.

Why distinguish physical and intelligence? Intelligence saturation: intelligence can make physical inputs maximally efficient, but the impact saturates.
➡️Physical and intelligence sectors are complements, you need more of both to increase output.

We've made an interactive tool you can play with to see how wages would evolve with automation & with adding exponentially more #AI, depending on parameters of your choice. Have fun (but maybe read the paper first 😈)! intelligencesaturation.org

(Artificial) Intelligence saturation and the future of work | Brookings In a new working paper, UPenn's Konrad Kording and Ioana Marinescu present a novel framework for assessing AI and the future of work

New @brookings.edu paper w. @kordinglab.bsky.social : Artificial Intelligence Saturation & the Future of Work. Wages can ↗️&↘️with #AI automation, as humans are pushed into physical jobs. In the longer run, intelligence saturation limits benefits from #AI. www.brookings.edu/articles/art... #EconSky

Application link here: www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...

#AI research fellow job at Schmidt Sciences. You can take it as a year of leave from your university too. One of the areas of focus is AI’s impact on the labor market #EconSky 👇

Monopsony Power in the Labor Market: From Theory to Policy Labor markets are not perfectly competitive: Monopsony power enables employers to pay workers less than the marginal revenue product of labor. We review three theoretical frameworks explaining monopso...

The conversation is based on my paper here: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Listen to our conversation on competition and #monopsony in the labor market, and the #antitrust policy implications. I had a lot of fun talking to David Fisher from AAI, like we had to cut out some of the laughing 🤭. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product...

Nice to see our work covered here 👇

Congratulations to my mentor and co-author Philippe Aghion!!!! His broad contributions to economics and boundless creative energy are truly inspiring.

AI Acquihires: Competition Risks, Talent Battles and Economic Spillovers Webinar - 8 October @ 17:00 CEST

🗣️Jonathan Kanter @lugaricano.bsky.social @imarinescu.bsky.social @igorletina.bsky.social Hans Zenger

Moderator: @florianederer.bsky.social
Register: cepr.org/events/ai-ac...
#EconSky