Institutional & Societal Implications¶

The broader impact of AI on academia, research institutions, and society.

Summaries¶

AI as Normal Technology — Narayanan & Kapoor: AI as slow-diffusing technology, not revolution
The Bitter Lesson — Sutton: general computation-scaling methods always win
The Shape of AI — Mollick: jagged frontier, bottlenecks, and salients

Academics Need to Wake Up on AI — Kustov on urgency of AI adoption in academia
Academics Need to Wake Up, Part II — Kustov's follow-up with concrete recommendations
Some Thoughts on AI and Research — Andrews (MIT): case-based framework for PhD skill investment under AI uncertainty
The Train Has Left the Station — Messing & Tucker (Brookings) on agentic AI and social science
Chris Blattman X Post on Claude Code Adoption — Blattman's social media post on adopting Claude Code

Zero Profit Condition Is Coming — Cunningham on competitive equilibrium, gains for least experienced
Attention, Verification and Congestion — Productivity externalities, convex costs of faster work
Faculty Adoption of AI — AI agents as experience goods, security risks, subsidies needed
Hadn't the Satisfaction Always Been in the Discovering — Intrinsic joy of research vs AI automation

Something Big Is Happening — Shumer on imminent AI disruption
What AI Got Wrong — Blattman on plausible-but-wrong AI errors requiring domain expertise