Justified Posteriors
Episodes
Kevin Bryan on Bottlenecks, AI in China, and What Economists Should Actually Be Working On
01 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week we to with Kevin Bryan, Associate Professor of Strategy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School, author of the legendary economics bl...
Seb Krier on AGI, the Coasean Singularity, and EDM
19 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Seb Krier on AGI, Scaffolding, and Coasean Bargaining at ScaleIn this episode of Justified Posteriors, we welcome Seb Krier — policy lead for AGI at...
Avi Goldfarb on Prediction Machines, O-Ring Tasks, and How AI is Reshaping Economics
04 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we’re joined by Avi Goldfarb, one of the leading economists of artificial intelligence and co-author of Prediction Machines. Avi has been...
Weak Links, Strong Predictions: Kremer's O-Ring at 30
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit empiricrafting.substack.comThis week, instead of reviewing a recent paper on AI, we go b...
The Most Important Philosophical Treatise of the 21st Century?
07 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, instead of reviewing an economics paper, we reviewed a work of philosophy—perhaps the most important one of this young millennium so far....
Alex Imas - Demand Collapse, Bargaining with Machines, and Behavioral AI Economics
23 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
University of Chicago behavioral economist Alex Imas joins us for a conversation on AI, economic growth, behavioral economics, and the future of scien...
Is AI Making Books on Amazon Worse?
10 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Seth and Andrey break down AI and the Quantity and Quality of Creative Products: Have LLMs Boosted Creation of Valuable Books? by Imk...
Noah Smith on Blogging, AI Economics, and Elite Overproduction
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with prominent blogger and economist Noah Smith to dig into the disconnect between AI hype and current macroeconomic reality. The central ...
Basil Halperin: Leading Indicators for TAI, Conditions for the Singularity, and Tax Policy at the End of History
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this week’s episode of Justified Posteriors, we interview TAI expert and friend of the show Basil Halperin of the University of Virginia. There B...
Can an AI Interview You Better Than a Human?
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss “Voice in AI Firms: A Natural Field Experiment on Automated Job Interviews” by Brian Jabarian and Luca Henkel. The paper examines a ran...
Anecdotes from AI Supercharged Science
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Anecdotes of AI Supercharged Science: Justified Posteriors reads “Early Science Acceleration Experiments with GPT-5”In this episode, Seth and Andr...
Ben Golub: AI Referees, Social Learning, and Virtual Currencies
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we sit down with Ben Golub, economist at Northwestern University, to talk about what happens when AI meets academic research, social ...
Are We There Yet? Evaluating METR’s Eval of AI’s Ability to Complete Tasks of Different Lengths
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Seth and Andrey are back to evaluating an AI evaluation, this time discussing METR’s paper “Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks.” The pa...
Epistemic Apocalypse and Prediction Markets (Bo Cowgill Pt. 2)
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We continue our conversation with Columbia professor Bo Cowgill. We start with a detour through Roman Jakobson’s six functions of language (plus two...
Does AI Cheapen Talk? (Bo Cowgill Pt. 1)
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we brought on our friend Bo Cowgill, to dissect his forthcoming Management Science paper, Does AI Cheapen Talk? The core question is ...
Evaluating GDPVal, OpenAI's Eval for Economic Value
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Justified Posteriors podcast, Seth and Andrey discuss “GDPVal” a new set of AI evaluations, really a novel approach to AI evalu...
Will Super-Intelligence's Opportunity Costs Save Human Labor?
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin read “We Won’t Be Missed: Work and Growth in the AGI World” by Pascual Restrepo (Yale) to under...
Can political science contribute to the AI discourse?
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Economists generally see AI as a production technology, or input into production. But maybe AI is actually more impactful as unlocking a new way of or...
Should AI Read Without Permission?
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many of today’s thinkers and journalists worry that AI models are eating their lunch: hoovering up these authors’ best ideas and giving them away ...
EMERGENCY POD: Is AI already causing youth unemployment?
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our first ever EMERGENCY PODCAST, co-host Seth Benzell is summoned out of paternity leave by Andrey Fradkin to discuss the AI automation paper that...
AI and its labor market effects in the knowledge economy
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss a new theoretical framework for understanding how AI integrates into the economy. We read the paper Artificial Intelligenc...
One LLM to rule them all?
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode of the Justified Posteriors Podcast, hosts Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin dive into the competitive dynamics of large languag...
What can we learn from AI exposure measures?
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a Justified Posteriors first, hosts Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin sit down with economist Daniel Rock, assistant professor at Wharton and AI2050 ...
A Resource Curse for AI?
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Justified Posteriors, we tackle the provocative essay “The Intelligence Curse” by Luke Drago and Rudolf Laine. What if AI is le...
Robots for the retired?
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Justified Posteriors, we examine the paper "Demographics and Automation" by economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo. The cen...
When Humans and Machines Don't Say What They Think
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Andrey and Seth examine two papers exploring how both humans and AI systems don't always say what they think. They discuss Luca Braghieri's study on p...
Scaling Laws Meet Persuasion
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we tackle the thorny question of AI persuasion with a fresh study: "Scaling Language Model Size Yields Diminishing Returns for Single...
Techno-prophets try macroeconomics: are they hallucinating?
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we tackle a brand new paper from the folks at Epoch AI called the "GATE model" (Growth and AI Transition Endogenous model). It makes ...
Did Meta's Algorithms Swing the 2020 Election?
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We hear it constantly: social media algorithms are driving polarization, feeding us echo chambers, and maybe even swinging elections. But what does th...
Claude Just Refereed the Anthropic Economic Index
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Justified Posteriors, we dive into the paper "Which Economic Tasks Are Performed with AI: Evidence from Millions of Claude Conversa...
How much should we invest in AI safety?
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we tackle one of the most pressing questions of our technological age: how much risk of human extinction should we accept in exchange...
Can AI make better decisions than an ER doctor?
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dive into the intersection of economics and healthcare with our latest podcast episode. How much can AI systems enhance high-stakes medical decision-m...
If the Robots Are Coming, Why Aren't Interest Rates Higher?
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we tackle an intriguing question inspired by a recent working paper: If artificial general intelligence (AGI) is imminent, why are re...
High Prices, Higher Welfare? The Auto Industry as a Case Study
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Does the U.S. auto industry prioritize consumers or corporate profits? In this episode of Justified Posteriors, hosts Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin ...
Scaling Laws in AI
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Does scaling alone hold the key to transformative AI?In this episode of Justified Posteriors, we dive into the topic of scaling laws in artificial int...
Is Social Media a Trap?
26 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Are we trapped by the social media we love? In this episode of the “Justified Posteriors” podcast, hosts Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin discuss a...
Beyond Task Replacement
11 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss Artificial Intelligence Technologies and Aggregate Growth Prospects by Timothy Bresnahan.* We contrast Tim Bresnahan's pap...
The Simple Macroeconomics of AI
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Will AI's impact be as modest as predicted, or could it exceed expectations in reshaping economic productivity? In this episode, hosts Seth Benzell an...
Situational Awareness
07 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How close are we to AGI, and what might its impact be on the global stage? In this episode, hosts Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin tackle the high-stak...