New Fellows study AI’s workplace impact

The AI Economy Institute (AIEI) is launching its third cohort of researchers, advancing our mission to understand the adoption of artificial intelligence across economies, industries, and communities.

We launched the AI Economy Institute because AI's economic impact is not predetermined. Though AI is being rapidly adopted, the evidence base for understanding its impact on work, jobs, education, productivity, and opportunity is still too thin. By increasing the scholarship around the AI economy and producing it in a timely and accessible way, we can help ensure that as AI transforms our world, we're equipping people with the knowledge and tools they need to make decisions and succeed with AI.

Our 2026 AI Economy Institute Cohort

The AI Economy Institute convenes outside experts and researchers to share their perspectives and advance the body of knowledge on topics related to AI, work, and education. Our third global research call centered on understanding how frontier firms are reshaping work and the broader economic landscape.

Representing a diverse group of institutions worldwide, our cohort brings together subject matter experts and researchers to explore how AI is reshaping the workforce, organizations, and the broader economy. The cohort consists of the following individuals, representing the following institutions:

• Brian Jabarian , Carnegie Mellon University
• Caspar David Peter, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Christoph Siemroth, University of Essex, England
• Daniel Yue, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Edoardo Maria Acabbi , University of Mannheim, Germany
• Frank Nagle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Advising Fellow and Cohort 2)
• Friederike Mengel, University of Essex, England; Erasmus University Rotterdam, Germany
• Gianmarco Ottaviano, Bocconi University, Italy
• Ilan Strauss, AI Disclosures Project
• Johannes Wachs, Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary
• Luca Henkel, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Luca Mazzone, University of Montreal, Canada
• Laura Nurski, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Belgium (Cohort 2)
• Meeyoung (Mia) Cha, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea
• Mustafa Afacan, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), United Arab Emirates; Sabancı University, Turkey (World Bank Affiliated Senior Fellow)
• Nataliya Wright, Columbia University
• Nuriye Melisa Bilgin, Koç University, Turkey
• Pëllumb Reshidi, Florida State University
• Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Belgium (Advising Fellow and Cohort 2)
• Salman Khan, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), United Arab Emirates (World Bank Affiliated Senior Fellow)
• Serena Booth, Brown University
• Wesley Rosslyn-Smith, University of Pretoria, South Africa (Advising Fellow)
• Yingfei Wang, Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Cohort members will analyze frontier firms to examine both upstream, firm-level transformations and downstream, economy-wide impacts. Researchers will also explore how AI changes job design, skill demands, productivity, and regional economic development.

AIEI's first two cohorts explored how AI is reshaping the talent pipeline, from higher education and skills to K-12, community colleges, and early-career pathways, so that we could understand and inform the early changes to the labor market. What we learned from that point of inquiry shifted the focus; this year's cohort moves further into the economy itself, focusing on frontier firms and how leading organizations are adopting AI, redesigning work, and creating the conditions for productivity, diffusion, and human agency at scale.

Interpreting the frontier: What this means for policy and strategy

Since its launch, the AI Economy Institute has fielded more than 800 responses to our calls for research proposals. The gap between what AI systems can do and what organizations can actually deploy will shape the pace of adoption. Gains in productivity may come alongside organizational shifts as firms adapt their workflows, teams, and decision-making processes.

At the same time, the expansion of automation raises a parallel question of whether systems are enhancing human learning or displacing it. Underlying all of this is a broader uncertainty about the extent to which AI will diffuse widely across economies or concentrate in a narrow set of firms and regions.

Cohort 3 moves beyond identifying these tensions and toward generating the empirical evidence needed to navigate them, providing policymakers, firms, and institutions with a clearer basis for decision-making in a rapidly evolving AI economy.