AI advising the White House? Why the task requires people—especially young folks
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The comments of the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) about having an “AI-intensive” CEA rather than hiring young human economists demand introspection. Here’s why we should re-examine the role this tech plays—and that young economists do too
The artificial intelligence (AI) debate, which economists have been having for years in various contexts, has come for the profession itself. Jason Furman, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) under US President Barack Obama and now a professor at Harvard, recently said that if he were running the CEA today, he would “somewhat regretfully and sadly” use current AI systems instead of hiring 20 actual human economists. The chair’s job, he added, is safe.
After a lot of pushback, including from former staff like me, Furman softened his stance, calling for an “AI-intensive CEA with only a skeleton staff.” He would still largely replace the junior staff—recent college graduates and graduate students—with AI, since he couldn’t justify jobs where “the bulk of what they did could be done by an AI.” By his own logic, Furman admits, his job as a junior economist at the CEA under President Bill Clinton would have been cut, too.
The parameters of this debate may be narrow, but in broad outline it is similar to those going on elsewhere in the economy. And maybe it’s because this particular controversy cuts so close to home, but I have found it useful to ask a different question: Not which work AI can replace, but how AI can serve the mission of the organization.