Chaining Tasks, Redefining Work: A Theory of AI Automation
Mert Demirer, John J. Horton, Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier, Peyman Shahidi · arXiv · 14 Jun 2026
Read original sourceOpen access
Where this sits in the debate
- Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? · its finding: it depends (why studies differ)
- Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?
Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model (AI-written).
Abstract
Production is a sequence of steps that can be executed (1) manually, (2) augmented with AI, or (3) fully automated within contiguous AI-executed steps called ''chains.'' Firms optimally bundle steps into tasks and then jobs, trading off specialization gains against coordination costs. We characterize the optimal assignment of humans and AI to steps and the firm's resulting job structure, showing that comparative advantage logic can fail with AI chaining. The model implies non-linear productivity gains from AI quality improvements and admits a CES representation at the macro level. Empirical evidence supports the model's key predictions that (1) AI-executed steps co-occur in chains, (2) dispersion of AI-exposed steps lowers AI execution at the job level, and (3) adjacency to AI-executed steps increases the likelihood that a step is AI-executed.
About this publication
Preprint. A preprint — posted publicly before or without journal peer review; findings may still be revised.
- Published
- 2026 (4 months ago)
- 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.
Related by theme, not necessarily by method or conclusion.
- The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers
SSRN · 2024 - GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models
arXiv · 2023 - Experimental evidence on the productivity effects of generative artificial intelligence
Science · 2023 - The simple macroeconomics of AI
Economic Policy · 2024
Overview assembled automatically from collected metadata. How this site is built.