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aleximas.bsky.social
Economics + Applied AI, Prof at University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Formerly: Carnegie Mellon, UCSD, Northwestern. Website: www.aleximas.com
938 posts 7,151 followers 2,986 following
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AI can be overconfident. So a team of researchers came up with a solution: Give AI a way to evaluate and calibrate its own uncertainty, allowing a user to decide how much to trust a prediction. www.chicagobooth.edu/review/how-a...

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

The gutting of US biomedical research with loss of ~2,500 grants affecting research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious disease, global health and much more www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

submitted 20 days ago • 10 comments

"You need some way of actually measuring people’s beliefs or their preferences if you wanna test these behavioral stories around bubbles," says Chicago Booth’s Leland Bybee. www.chicagobooth.edu/review/in-it... #econsky #ai

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Our work now published showing how better AI can improve both accuracy and diversity in hiring relative to supervised learning tools and status-quo human hiring.

submitted 22 days ago • 3 comments

The interesting thing about people dragging the folks in that NYT piece who said that they didn’t vote for moms to get deported is that the article is about how these women are organizing for a member of their community, aggressively and openly, and actually, that’s good.

submitted 23 days ago • 33 comments

Introspection has gotten a bad rap over the years. Here we show that people have more insight into the algorithms behind their decisions than we tend to assume. Thrilled to see this work out at Nature Comms with the always brilliant @thatadammorris.bsky.social!

submitted 54 days ago • 0 comments

This is cool for, like, other people who have actually used AI... not me, nope.

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

🚨New paper (link in reply)🚨 Are we underestimating AI use in self-report surveys? Yes, by as much as 30 percentage pts. We find 60% self-reported vs. truth closer to ~90% (!!) Why? Social desirability bias, people embarrassed/worried to admit AI use, so they underreport 🧵

submitted 56 days ago • 3 comments

Yes, Bluesky is full of ill-informed AI takes. But that doesn’t have to matter at all. The news you need is out there. In addition to the filters recommended here, I recommend … +

submitted 59 days ago • 3 comments

Encourage your students to submit posters and register! Limited free housing is provided for student participants only, on a first-come (i.e., request)-first-serve basis. We are also actively looking for sponsors. Reach out if you are interested! Please repost! Help spread the words!

submitted 64 days ago • 2 comments

Just so it’s clear, the government wanted to oversee hiring and employment at a *private* institution in order to implement a purity test. When the institution refused, they took away money for life saving research (cancer etc). That’s some fascist shit.

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

The algorithm knows me better than I know myself

submitted 71 days ago • 1 comment

The profession really benefits from having Ivan in it

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

At Passover Seder yesterday, the host asked “what makes people slaves”. His 5 year old son said “money, because then you have to sit there counting it all day instead of having fun.” People mostly laughed, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

submitted 72 days ago • 1 comment

Promised my kid that I had saved all my amazing transformer toys at his grandparent’s house. Opened the box only to find this: Wtf is a formulator force. It also broke the second I touched it. Tears were shed.

submitted 72 days ago • 2 comments

This post seems to have struck a chord in some circles, more views in the first couple of days than anything else I've written: open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

submitted 72 days ago • 0 comments

I will be the first to admit that Econ 101 misses many important factors in the real world. But in case of tariffs, these real world factors (eg fragility/interdependence in supply chain networks, consumer sentiment) only make the consequences even *worse*.

submitted 72 days ago • 0 comments

The issue, as always, is getting people to click and engage. We have more knowledge freely accessible than any time in human history. Full MIT courses on literally everything, thu click of a button. Are people more educated now than before? (no)

submitted 72 days ago • 1 comment

chag pesach sameach, everyone

submitted 73 days ago • 6 comments

YOU MOTHERFUCKER I WAS LITERALLY 15 MINUTES AWAY FROM PUBLISHING AN ARTICLE NOW I HAVE TO RUN THE ANALYSIS ALL OVER AGAIN TOOK YOU TEN DAYS TO REMEMBER WHAT A SMARTPHONE WAS AND GIVE TIM APPLE HIS BRIBERY EXEMPTION, MEANWHILE YOU STILL HAVEN'T FUCKING EXEMPTED BANANAS

submitted 73 days ago • 68 comments

Important null results in development economics Despite the bias against publishing null results, they are important for policy, helping to kill bad ideas. I've highlighted some key examples we have featured on @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/import...

submitted 74 days ago • 3 comments

What is a recent #EconSky economics paper that has a core result that is 1. Important 2. Surprising (sign or size) 3. Decently simple Self nominations r welcome.

submitted 74 days ago • 4 comments

Would also add: Reasoners excel in STEM because of large amount of training data with very similar content. Reasoners still continue to fail in STEM when faced with new content (see recent results on 2025 Math Olympiad questions). arxiv.org/abs/2503.21934

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

Despite being hugely influential in psychology and more widely, there is minimal formal work exploring whether and why the contact hypothesis is true. We provide a model based on "coarse thinking" and apply it to discriminatory policing.

submitted 75 days ago • 4 comments