Former CEA chair says AI can replace his junior researcher work
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Jason Furman, who served as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) under the Obama administration, wrote that about 95% of the work he did as a junior researcher could be done by AI, and that most of the CEA's output could perhaps be reproduced with about ten people plus AI. Furman also said that what AI can replace is his first job, not his last. The above percentage and "ten people plus AI" are Furman's own judgments, not verified empirical results.
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- Hacker News AIAI Could Do My First Job. Not My Last
Economist Jason Furman argues that AI could now perform most of the analytical and writing work he did as a junior CEA staffer and much of what a 35-person Council of Economic Advisers produced, suggesting roughly ten people plus AI could replicate it, while chair-level tasks like meetings, briefings and testimony remain human. He describes experiments (Paperwright, Blogwright, Briefwright) that generate economics papers, blog posts and briefings from short prompts, and weighs the tradeoffs for junior hiring and training pipelines.
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