Hide table of contents

After having researched the topic as part of the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) for several years, I have made a six-week course on "The Economics of AI" freely available on Coursera, supported by a grant from the EA Long-Term Future Fund. The course covers how transformative artificial intelligence will affect our economy and society, labor markets, inequality, growth, and economic policy.

You can check out an intro video here:

Intro to "The Economics of AI" by Anton Korinek

Economics is a social science that is well-suited to modelling social processes, to examine how to intervene in them and how to make our society work better. It has long been a favorite subject to study for effective altruists. As artificial intelligence is starting to transform our world, the question of how to positively shape its economic impact has also received growing attention in the EA community. My course focuses on the long-term effects of AI on our economy and society, on economic policy solutions, and on governance structures that will be useful under transformative AI scenarios.

To sign up for the course and learn more about these topics, please go to https://www.coursera.org/learn/economics-of-ai

Course Structure

The course consists of six modules that introduce you to the cutting-edge research in the economics of transformative AI.  Each module is dedicated to a specific topic that we will be covering via short videos, exercises, and readings. 

The first module starts by analyzing the nature of intelligence, how it relates to our economy and how AI will transform it. This part is accessible to anyone with a social science background. The remainder of the course is targeted at people with a background in economics or a similar level of analytical skills, i.e. graduate students or advanced undergraduates. Others may enjoy the non-technical parts of the course. 

The second module connects the analysis of the nature of intelligence to models of production and technological change in economics and examines how these processes are affected by AI. Then we turn to how technological change drives aggregate economic growth, covering a range of scenarios including a potential singularity in growth. We also study the impact of AI-driven technological change on labor markets and workers, evaluating whether fears about technological unemployment are well-founded and what to do about them. Next we investigate how to steer progress in artificial intelligence in a direction that benefits humanity. Finally, we analyze the potential for transformative progress in AI to lead to significant disruptions, and we use the methods of economics to study the question of how humans can control highly intelligent AI algorithms.

Please click here to sign up for the course, and please share this post with others who may be interested in the topic.

If you have any questions, suggestions or other feedback, please email me at econofai@virginia.edu.

84

0
0

Reactions

0
0
Comments6


Sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:

Not directly related to the course, but since you're an economist with an interest in AI, I'm curious what you think about AGI will drastically increase economies of scale.

I think it's a pretty plausible scenario but not the only one - there's quite a range of possibilities - let me recommend a survey paper with Phil Trammell that is closely related.

Thank you for carving out time and attention for this course, Anton. Thanks also to the EA Long-Term Future Fund for investing in the project. The timing is perfect, as many of us curtail December/January travel plans and look for more-productive alternatives to watching Omicron case counts rise.

Signed up, and I'm a few videos in already. Will share with others who have an economics bent!

Thank you so much!

Sounds very interesting! I'm not sure if I have the time for a course, but I'd still be happy to know - If I only have very limited time per week, what's in your opinion the minimal amount of time I'll need to put in weekly? e.g. will one hour a week make sense if I take it over half a year? Or is there a stricter limit?

I'd suggest to just try it out. Coursera allows you to reset your timeline if you go slower than the suggested schedule so it's no problem to spread out the material over a longer time range, and I hope you'll still find it informative.

Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
 ·  · 5m read
 · 
When we built a calculator to help meat-eaters offset the animal welfare impact of their diet through donations (like carbon offsets), we didn't expect it to become one of our most effective tools for engaging new donors. In this post we explain how it works, why it seems particularly promising for increasing support for farmed animal charities, and what you can do to support this work if you think it’s worthwhile. In the comments I’ll also share our answers to some frequently asked questions and concerns some people have when thinking about the idea of an ‘animal welfare offset’. Background FarmKind is a donation platform whose mission is to support the animal movement by raising funds from the general public for some of the most effective charities working to fix factory farming. When we built our platform, we directionally estimated how much a donation to each of our recommended charities helps animals, to show users.  This also made it possible for us to calculate how much someone would need to donate to do as much good for farmed animals as their diet harms them – like carbon offsetting, but for animal welfare. So we built it. What we didn’t expect was how much something we built as a side project would capture peoples’ imaginations!  What it is and what it isn’t What it is:  * An engaging tool for bringing to life the idea that there are still ways to help farmed animals even if you’re unable/unwilling to go vegetarian/vegan. * A way to help people get a rough sense of how much they might want to give to do an amount of good that’s commensurate with the harm to farmed animals caused by their diet What it isn’t:  * A perfectly accurate crystal ball to determine how much a given individual would need to donate to exactly offset their diet. See the caveats here to understand why you shouldn’t take this (or any other charity impact estimate) literally. All models are wrong but some are useful. * A flashy piece of software (yet!). It was built as
 ·  · 2m read
 · 
Project for Awesome (P4A) is a charity video contest running from February 11th to February 19th, 2025. The public can vote on videos supporting various charities, and the ones with the most votes receive donations. Thanks to the support of the EA community, three EA charities received $37,000 each last year. Please help generate additional donations for EA charities again this year with just a few clicks! Voting is open until Wednesday, February 19th at 11:59 AM EST. You can find more information about P4A in this EA Forum post. On the P4A website, there are numerous videos showcasing different charities, including several EA charities. Feel free to watch the videos and cast your votes. Here’s how it works: „Anyone can go to the homepage of projectforawesome.com to see all videos. You can sort by charity category, pick from a dropdown of organization names, or search for a specific video. After you click on a video, look for a big red “VOTE” button either next to or below the video. You’ll have to check an “I’m not a robot” box, too.“ This year, there’s a new rule: „Our voting rule for Project for Awesome 2025 is one vote per charitable organization per device.“ So, you can vote for all the charities you want. List of videos about EA charities If you can’t find videos of EA-aligned charities directly, here’s a list: * Access to Medicines Initiative (Vote here) * ACTRA (Vote here) * Against Malaria Foundation (Vote here) * Animal Advocacy Africa (Vote here) * Animal Advocacy Careers (Vote here or here) * Animal Charity Evaluators (Vote here or here) * Animal Equality (Vote here) * Aquatic Life Institute (Vote here or here) * Center for the Governance of AI (Vote here) * Faunalytics (Vote here or here) * GiveDirectly (Vote here) * Giving What We Can (Vote here or here) * Good Food Institute (Vote here or here or here) * International Campaign to Aboli