David Brancaccio

And there are a lot of stakeholders with the power to help with this, right?

Chris Farrell, Marketplace's Senior Economics Contributor.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

And in Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio.

It's the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media.

Even an econ degree does not insulate you from AI.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles.

A lot of money shifted on stock markets yesterday amid the realization that artificial intelligence could replace not just workers but entire business models, especially business software.

The catalyst was in part a new release of Anthropic's co-work system that doesn't just answer questions put to it, but follows through on entire tasks.

For example, it might vet a legal contract, or book a whole business trip in one fell swoop, or create a whole deck of slides for a sales pitch.

Down went companies that sell traditional software.

Legal Zoom stock fell nearly 20%.

Salesforce was down about 7%.

Expedia, the travel service, down 15%.

The dread felt by human accountants, lawyers, and travel agents now extends to the software firms that had digitized some of their work.

This extends to entire professions.

Is it even worth getting a degree now in economics, long considered a solid route to employability?

Economics departments at colleges and universities are worried and working to adapt.

We're joined now by Wendy Carlin, a professor of economics at University College London and director of the Core Econ open source curriculum project.