More News from IWER

A study published earlier this year by academic research fellows Martin Mocker, Nils O Fonstad, and co-author, found that companies that can sustain and scale digital innovation typically do not rely on a single CIO, AI team, or "heroic leader," but, rather on a governance system where three leadership roles collaborate.

AI can absolutely make tasks faster. Research from professor Danielle Li and co-authors found that generative AI tools increased productivity among customer support workers by 14% on average, with the largest gains among newer and less experienced staff.

The human brain is biologically wired to avoid unnecessary effort. Postdoctoral associate Hause Lin noted that performing tasks is "computationally very costly" for both the brain and the body. This suggests that a culture of valuing effort can override the biological drive for ease.

In a new working paper, assistant professor Taha Choukhmane and co-authors studied what Americans were asking AI about money, and what AI was telling them in response. Choukhmane and his colleagues asked 1,000 Americans to write out questions they might send to a chatbot. The researchers found that AI consistently gave better advice to people who asked better questions. "It might be that AI is going to be more useful for people who already know a little bit about finance and financial literacy," Choukhmane said.

In 2020, former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell unveiled a novel approach to policymaking, which involved temporarily tolerating periods of higher inflation to make up for past stretches when it was too low and to focus on "broad and inclusive" employment. "It was fighting the last war," said professor Kristin Forbes. "It wasn't thinking about how the world was changing and the bigger role of global supply shocks."

Professor Emeritus Paul Osterman wrote: "Policymakers must address the US's reliance on disposable labor. Artificial intelligence is likely to expand the ranks of these workers, particularly in white-collar occupations, as more businesses can no longer be certain about their staffing needs. While not all workers need to be forced into standard employment, they deserve some minimum level of protection and benefits — that includes gig workers and freelancers, who often don't have any."

A recent paper by professor Sinan Aral and PhD candidate Michael Caosun revealed that the act of outsourcing tasks to AI erodes the very skills you're handing off. Workers who lean heavily on AI for writing lose writing fluency. Junior employees de-skill faster than experienced ones, who have the professional reserves to retain their capabilities. In the long run, "it leaves the worker worse off than if AI had never been adopted," Aral said.

Eliminating the federal gas tax won't make a meaningful difference when gas prices have gone up by 40% or higher in parts of the country, said visiting professor Gilbert Metcalf. Farmers already get an exemption from the tax. "If eliminating the tax leads to a little bit more demand for gasoline, then that's just going to drive up the pre-tax price, which will just hurt farmers yet again," Metcalf said.

Senior lecturer Otto Scharmer wrote: "Being alive on this planet at this Axial juncture, where we can see the potential for both civilizational collapse and profound civilizational regeneration, and thus being part of a generation that has the opportunity to tip the balance in one direction or another, is perhaps the most meaningful gift anyone could hope for."

Lecturer John Richardson and co-author wrote: "Often, we end up making bad decisions to avoid the short-term discomfort of turning people down. Look, we agree — saying no is hard. The good news is that a little preparation and practice will make it easier. Even if you are one of those people that dreads it."