What Alex Imas thinks about AI and jobs
Behavioural economist at Chicago Booth, professor of behavioural science and economics and director of AGI economics at Google DeepMind.
Alex Imas did not write this page.
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12 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Alex Imas has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsSomething like the relational sector, which is what I defined as, um, you know, basically services and goods where the fact that the human was in the loop was actually part of the value of that product.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 1st of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsrather than thinking about individual forecasts like what me and Phil are going to do, rather looking at kind of like basically generating prediction markets, where you get aggregate forecasts, where you get like kind of wisdom of the crowd effects. And kind of the reason that I think this is because we have been famously terrible at forecasting.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 2nd of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd if you look at Ricardo's predictions, they're actually right. If you look at all those jobs that made money in Ricardo's time, they got automated. So, if I was David Ricardo and I woke up and somebody told me all those jobs did get automated. And you ask me David Ricardo, like what do you think the prime age employment rate is in 2026? I think he would be surprised if you told him it was the highest it's ever been other than 2000.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 3rd of 33 in this recording
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Their wordswe don't have any data. I've been kind of saying we need a Manhattan Project for data. We don't have data on basically consumer demand elasticities. We don't know what they are.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 4th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsthe ballerina and the kind of performer, that's the wrong reference class. Right now we have a lot of jobs where you have different tasks. So this is the task-based model jobs where you have like a lot of different tasks. So like a doctor, what is their job? They're filling out insurance documents. They're you know, going and like calling different pharmaceutical companies. And one of their tasks is to actually see the patient and talk to them, but that's like actually not the main part part of the job.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 8th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsThe only way this relational story works and this is what we need more more data on is if it's not a human is not a horse in the sense that it is providing value from the output where if you replace the human, the the value of the output decreases.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 11th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsI think in some ways like one of the worst scenarios is a drip scenario because of the political economy piece. Right? Because like you know, people essentially what you what you might see is like people not really being unemployed in mass, but kind of like moving into sectors that pay them less money, kind of basically getting uh what happened with phone operators in in in the mid-century of the of the between 1920 and 1940, phone operators were completely automated, right? But it took 20 years even though the technology existed.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 12th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsLike right now we're endowed with labor that can turn into uh that can turn into income. When that is no longer the case and we are now at the mercy of the of the elected official for like basic needs, right? So that to me feels like a power sharing arrangement that's really dangerous.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 13th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsThey just recently released a report, and I think like you really have to squint to see anything happening. Like basically, if you want to take kind of like uh an an approach across the entire economy and looking at even looking at like software engineering, like the most exposed sort of sectors, there's just like not really anything going on. There might be a little bit of a signal about like junior developers getting jobs less than before, and that but that's like a less than before rather than a level shift.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 14th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordslet's say we get into a narrative where like if you're a firm and you're not laying people off, then you're seen as like not adapting AI enough. So like then you'll get you're going to just get a cascade effect of firms like just needing to keep up with the Joneses in terms of like starting to lay people off.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 15th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsSo, what you need is that basically demand to be bounded, like a hard bound, not even like a soft sort of like diminishing sensitivity. You need for them to eventually say, "I've had enough. I don't want to spend any more money." And for that money to not enter as investment.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 16th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsSo, like with lawyers particularly, you need some entity to back up the product. You need kind of like an ownership of the product. You need somebody to be able to fire or or hire, like licensing issues. There's a lot of like sort of like regulatory layers that are like also going to be keeping even if there's no relational element human in the loop that have nothing to do with like the ability of the human to actually perform the service.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 17th of 33 in this recording