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Researchers

Ajay Agrawal

Economist, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
Signed the letter · Academia · Canada

homepage · wikipedia · other

Holds the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Founder of the Creative Destruction Lab (2012) and co-founder of NEXT Canada. Co-author, with Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb, of 'Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence' (2018) and 'Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence' (2022). Co-author of 'A Research Agenda for the Economics of Transformative AI' (NBER, 2025). Appointed to the Order of Canada in 2022. Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter.

AI-written Documented facts only, from the sources below.

23 works in the co-authorship map · 5,732 citations across them

Sources

  1. Ajay Agrawal - Wikipedia
  2. Ajay Agrawal - Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
  3. A Research Agenda for the Economics of Transformative AI
  4. “Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter” — source

In the network

10 co-authors on the map · PageRank #6 of 400 · bridge #5 of 400 · 1 step from Erik Brynjolfsson · cluster: Economics of prediction and innovation.

Measured on this map only, which grows out of the letter's signatories; what these numbers mean. See Ajay Agrawal on the map

Documented positions

Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? agrees

Views AI as a drop in the cost of prediction — a general-purpose 'bicycle for the mind' with large productivity upside.

Evidence

  1. The Economics of Bicycles for the Mind
  2. The Economics of Artificial Intelligence

Why researchers disagree on this · Who else says what

Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates? leans disagree

Argues for a 'Turing Transformation' in which AI augments rather than replaces workers, raising demand for human skills.

Evidence

  1. The Turing Transformation: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Augmentation, and Skill Premiums
  2. Enhancing Worker Productivity Without Automating Tasks: A Different Approach to AI and the Task-Based Model

Why researchers disagree on this · Who else says what

Will AI widen inequality? it's complicated

Suggests augmenting AI could compress skill premiums by leveling expertise — but notes automation-heavy paths do the opposite.

Evidence

  1. The Turing Transformation: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Augmentation, and Skill Premiums

Why researchers disagree on this · Who else says what

Should governments act on AI now? it's complicated

His policy work weighs supporting AI diffusion against premature restriction — policy matters, but heavy-handed regulation has costs.

Evidence

  1. Economic Policy for Artificial Intelligence

Why researchers disagree on this · Who else says what

How fast will the impact arrive? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

Selected work

Writes with

Avi Goldfarb (11), Joshua Gans (8), Alexander Oettl (6), John McHale (5), Christian Catalini (3), Alberto Galasso (2), Anton Korinek (2), Erik Brynjolfsson (2), Iain Cockburn (2), Laurina Zhang (1)

Co-authors on the map, by papers written together (10 of 10 shown).

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