I see that people are still reading my blog! I recently posted a new working paper that interests people. It is titled "Will AI Improve Undergraduate Economics Education?". Here is a free copy.
Here are 5 interesting ideas I explore in my paper
Here is what AI has to say about my essay!
1. AI is making smart people smarter—and lazy people lazier.
Everyone assumes AI is like electricity: everyone benefits. That's wrong. AI is more like a gym. Some people become stronger because they use it to push themselves harder. Others use it as an excuse to stop thinking. The same technology could produce the most intellectually vibrant generation in history—or the least curious. The difference isn't AI. It's us.
2. The college essay is dead. Good riddance.
For decades, universities confused polished writing with learning. AI has exposed the illusion. A beautifully written paper no longer proves that a student understands anything. Colleges now face a choice: either cling to a grading system that robots have mastered, or reinvent education around skills that can't be outsourced so easily. AI didn't kill higher education. It revealed that much of it was already broken.
3. The biggest winners from AI won't be the smartest people. They'll be the most curious.
For centuries, knowledge was scarce. The winners were the people who knew the answers. Today, answers cost almost nothing. The new scarce resource is knowing what to ask. Curiosity has gone from being a personality trait to becoming an economic asset. In the AI economy, the people asking better questions will outperform the people giving yesterday's answers.
4. AI could make government dramatically better—if politics doesn't get in the way.
Economists have spent decades proposing elegant policies that governments couldn't implement because they lacked information. AI changes that. Suddenly we can measure pollution in real time. We can estimate land values parcel by parcel. We can target benefits far more precisely. The next revolution in government won't come from better ideology. It will come from better information. The technology exists. The question is whether politics will let us use it.
5. AI doesn't eliminate scarcity. It changes what is scarce.
This is the biggest idea in the paper. Every great technology changes what society values. The automobile made horses worthless and locations valuable. The internet made information free and attention scarce. AI is making intelligence abundant. That means judgment, trust, creativity, and wisdom become more valuable than ever. The future won't belong to the people with the fastest chatbot. It will belong to the people who know what is worth doing once everyone has one.
My paper is targeted to ambitious economics departments who want to give student's their $ worth for trusting them to educate young people.