What Brad DeLong thinks about AI agents

@brad-delong · 87 positions · On ppll ↗

Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

Brad DeLong did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

Filter AI agents · Newest first

Topic

All 87AI agents 1America 12LLMs 11interest rates 8politics 8behavioural science 5design 5government 5innovation 4

38 more topics

investing 4social media 4war 4data centers 3immigration 3AI and jobs 2Anthropic 2education 2energy 2inflation 2infrastructure 2journalism 2religion 2simplicity 2solar 2stock market 2agency 1AI slop 1ambition 1capitalism 1chat interfaces 1China 1democracy 1discipline 1economists 1fiscal policy 1Google 1neural networks 1optimism 1Python 1racism 1SaaS 1semiconductors 1tariffs 1taste 1the cloud 1vibe coding 1writing 1

Sort

NewestOldest

Only Brad DeLong on AI agents. See everyone on AI agents

1 dated position, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Brad DeLong has said — not written or endorsed by them.

1 position so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

1. 29 Oct 2026, 23:01 UTC

   Our readingThe capability of AI agents is uneven and depends on the density of training data and checkable rewards.

   Their wordsYet the capability is uneven, not general: agents can refactor a large codebase and still botch a citation: they are strongest where training data and checkable rewards are dense, weakest in the long tail.

   ↗ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, & Co.: They Are Not Brains, They Are Kernel-Smoother Functions: HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVESbraddelong.substack.com