---
title: "Data-Driven Automation · AI Fault Line"
url: https://aifaultline.com/research/p/title-311c8a72d5698635/
description: "AI Fault Line is a neutral, evidence-cited field guide to why experts looking at the same developments disagree about AI's effect on productivity, jobs, inequality, regulation and the pace of change."
---

[Research](https://aifaultline.com/research/)

# Data-Driven Automation

[Maryam Farboodi](https://aifaultline.com/authors/network/#map=maryam-farboodi), Andrew J. Koh, Anchi Xia · NBER Working Papers · June 2026

[Read original source](https://www.nber.org/papers/w35320)

Where this sits in the debate

- [Will AI actually boost productivity and growth?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/productivity/) · its finding: it depends ([why studies differ](https://aifaultline.com/debate/productivity/#why))

- [Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/jobs/)

Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model ([AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)).

## Key takeaway [AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)

This NBER paper builds a dynamic model of automation where task-specific data accumulates endogenously as a byproduct of economic activity and generates cross-task spillovers that raise productivity elsewhere. It matters as a theoretical foundation for treating data — rather than just compute or algorithms — as the accumulable capital driving automation dynamics, with implications for how automation propagates unevenly across tasks and for data policy.

## The paper in three steps [AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)

Written by an AI agent from the paper's abstract, which is the
primary source and is quoted below.

1

The question

How does data, as an input that builds up from economic activity, shape the automation of tasks over time?

2

The approach

The authors build a dynamic model in which data is heterogeneous and task-specific, accumulates endogenously as a byproduct of economic activity, and spills over so that data generated by one task can raise productivity in another.

3

The findings

The available abstract describes the model's structure and its analysis of the transition path, but it is cut off before stating the results.

How to read it: theory.
A theoretical model — its value is the mechanism it isolates; ask whether the assumptions fit the real economy.

## Limitations and counterpoints [AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)

This is a theoretical model; its conclusions depend on its assumptions about how data accumulates and spills over, and the available abstract does not report the results.

## Abstract

We build a dynamic model of data-driven automation in which data (i) is heterogeneous and task-specific; (ii) accumulates endogenously as a byproduct of economic activity; and (iii) exhibits spillovers such that data generated by one task can augment the productivity of another. Along the transition

## About this publication

**Working paper.** A working paper — circulated for discussion before formal peer review, the standard first outlet in economics.

Published

2026

Citations

Not recorded for this source

Citation counts come from OpenAlex; none are recorded for this source — absence of a count is not absence of citations.

[Chart: published 2026]

Andrew Koh, Maryam Farboodi signed the wemustactnow.ai letter — part of why this paper is in the collection.

## More on this topic

Related by theme, not necessarily by method or conclusion.

- [Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-2139-ssrn-4573321/) SSRN · 2023

- [Generative AI at Work](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-1093-qje-qjae044/) The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2025

- [The Impact of AI on Developer Productivity: Evidence from GitHub Copilot](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-48550-arxiv-2302-06590/) arXiv · 2023

- [The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-1257-mac-20180386/) American Economic Journal Macroeconomics · 2020

Overview assembled automatically from collected metadata.
[How this site is built](https://aifaultline.com/about/).