Matthias Haslberger

Two inspiring days at the Nuffield Politics of AI workshop!

This was social science at its best, thanks to all involved! @benansell.bsky.social @jburnmurdoch.ft.com @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social

Rage against the machine? Generative AI exposure, subjective risk, and policy preferences How does novel technology change public policy demands? Scholars interested in the effect of automation on policy preferences have commonly argued that exposure to automation technology increases s...

📚 And if the article piques your interest, here is the link to the full paper: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Does AI change what people expect from government? Exposure to new technology – specifically generative AI like ChatGPT – can influence what citizens expect from their elected officials. A recent study from Matthias Haslberger and an international tea...

🤔 You're interested in how exposure to AI affects people's risk perceptions and policy preferences, but don't have time to read a full paper?

💡 @unisg.ch has got you covered with a write-up about our recent paper in @jeppjournal.bsky.social.

www.unisg.ch/en/newsroom/...

Sign-up link: forms.gle/1PaNbatuZbTW...

We're grateful for generous support from @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social and the Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods/DPIR.

The in-person workshop is open to the academic community; you can use the link in the next post to sign up. If you're interested in hearing about and discussing citizen perceptions, preferences, and priorities around AI with a stellar group of researchers, this might be for you.

I'm excited to share the schedule for the Politics of AI workshop I have the pleasure of co-hosting together with @benansell.bsky.social at @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social next week.

Link: matthiashaslberger.github.io/ai/

BJPolS abstract discussing the dynamic between knowledge economy migration and political shifts in Germany, specifically addressing urban versus rural opportunities and its implications on political perspectives and migration trends.

NEW -

Seeking Opportunity in the Knowledge Economy: Moving Places, Moving Politics? - https://cup.org/3LgxVos

"moving to opportunity results in... more left-leaning self-identification, and lower support for far-right parties"

- @valentinaconsiglio.bsky.social & @thmskrr.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

Of all the housing charts not made by MMI, this one is my favourite. It shows how, despite rhetoric, housing shortages aren't a global phenomenon, but they do seem to be an Anglo-American one.

Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes* Abstract. Concerns about excessive mobile phone use among youth are mounting. We present estimates of both behavioral and contextual peer effects, along wi

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes,” by Barwick, Chen, Fu, and Li: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Paths to Power (PtP) is out in @bjpols.bsky.social! It is a database with data on cabinet members' social profile globally from 1966-2021.

This is a great team effort with @chknutsen.bsky.social, @peterla.bsky.social, @inalkristiansen.bsky.social. But many more helped us along the way 🙏

A short 🧵

⚡9.-Klässler:innen 2024 vs. 2018:

Mathe -24⬇️
Bio -24⬇️
Chemie -24⬇️
Physik -23⬇️

Die neuen Ergebnisse des IQB-Bildungstrends.

Ganz grob gesprochen: 9.-Klässler:innen liegen heute etwa auf Niveau der 8.-Klässler:innen noch vor 6 Jahren.
1/3

Rage against the machine? Generative AI exposure, subjective risk, and policy preferences How does novel technology change public policy demands? Scholars interested in the effect of automation on policy preferences have commonly argued that exposure to automation technology increases s...

The message to mainstream politicians: make the most of this window of opportunity to defuse the coming backlash before it sweeps you away!

Link to my paper (with Jane Gingrich and Jasmine Bhatia): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Ever insightful by @beamagistro.bsky.social and colleagues on political consequences of AI in the labor market.

The hopeful part of their message - the policies that are most likely to work, such as retraining programs, enjoy widespread popular support - is also borne out in my work on the UK.

Happy German Reunification Day!

And thanks for the insightful thread, @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social!

I know senior scholars have too much on their plates already, but I hope they will give this blogpost (and the ones to follow) a read. The "Early Career state of mind" is very real, and the anonymous ECRs here capture so many of the challenges that it raises

That one can be an autoethnography then, gotta expand my methodological toolkit! 😅

At the blog I wrote about a new paper by @natewilmers.bsky.social , @zparolin.bsky.social , and @lukaslehner.bsky.social .

We're living in a novel era of inequality discordance. What's going on?!

asocial.substack.com/p/inequality...

I agree. But here is where AI can come in: we're developing a protocol for getting detailed occupation information (4-digit ISCO or 6-digit SOC) in online surveys. Combine that with a Big-Five battery or other psych measures, and some of these questions should become more tractable!

❗Our choice of treatment comes with limitations, such as a level of ambiguity regarding what people take away from the experience. But we think the paper offers some important insights that future work on AI and policy preferences can build on.

We're curious to hear what you think!

🤝We interpret this as prospective winners exhibiting sociotropic preferences to support (but not just compensate!) losers, perhaps because of lingering uncertainty over longer-term consequences.

More results (heterogeneous effects, text analysis of open-ended question) are in the paper.

🤔So, people are self-interested, hence they should be less supportive of social policies they don't expect to benefit from themselves, right?

But that's not what we found! Working with AI increased support for social policies, especially for providing training opportunities.

💡Working with AI in our tasks did not make people feel like they were at greater risk of losing their jobs. Overall, they became more optimistic about the consequences of AI, for themselves and for society.

We expected that people would follow the standard risk-insurance model: that seeing AI in action increases subjective risk and people respond by demanding compensation. But instead...

🚨Very excited to see our new paper out in @jeppjournal.bsky.social!

We looked at how working with AI shapes people's risk perceptions and social policy preferences, with some surprising results ⬇️

Indeed! We're currently developing a study that will allow us to look at exactly that. In general, it is surprising that psychological traits have played such a small role in the politics of tech change literature so far, considering the central role of subjective risk.

Thanks for the shout-out, @sophieehill.bsky.social!

Our findings are a snapshot from the early days of AI adoption. You pick up on many of the open questions that we're trying to answer in follow-up work (how accurate are risk perceptions, role of people's psychological traits, etc), so stay tuned!

We've talked to the team at @worldpolitics.bsky.social about our recent paper on inheritance taxation. This is what came out of it. Have a look!

Mind the Gap In the July 2025 (Volume 77, Number 3) issue of World Politics, Mads Elkjær, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen; Ben Ansell, professor in the De...

3 of 6 authors of the July @worldpolitics.bsky.social article, "Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality" spoke with The Storied Teller about #inheritance #taxation & #wealth #inequality. @madselk.bsky.social @benansell.bsky.social @mhaslberger.bsky.social wpj.princeton.edu/storied-tell...

To exit or not to exit? Employers’ considerations in a collective skill formation system Political economy scholars have long studied the (pre-)conditions conducive to the collective provision of private goods, such as in-firm training. Previous research has established the importance ...

🚨New article alert in @jvetjournal.bsky.social 🚨 Together with Scherwin Bajka
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This should be of interest not just for economists!