Week 1·Week 1 in the Syllabus →

AI Economics

Economic Frameworks for AI

• RequiredThree Theses on AI Value Capture (10 min)Luis Garicano (2026)
• RecommendedGoogle: We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI (12 min)SemiAnalysis (2023)
• RecommendedOur AI Future: From Abundance to Apocalypse (45 min)Chad Jones (2026)
• RecommendedHas AI Impacted the Labor Market Yet? (20 min)Alex Imas (2026)
• OptionalThe Task Is Not the Job (10 min)Luis Garicano (2026)
• OptionalAI and Our Economic Future (lecture) (1 hr)Chad Jones (2026)
• OptionalA.I. and Our Economic FutureCharles I. Jones (2026)
• OptionalBill Gates: A.I. ‘Makes Nuclear Weapons Look Like Nothing’ (The Ezra Klein Show) (1 hr 14 min)Ezra Klein and Bill Gates (2026)

Bulls vs. Skeptics

• RecommendedMachines of Loving Grace (1 hr)Dario Amodei (2024)
• RecommendedThe Gentle Singularity (8 min)Sam Altman (2025)
• RecommendedWill AI Soon Lead to Double-Digit Growth? (30 min)Ben Moll and Alex Imas (2026)
• OptionalThe Techno-Optimist Manifesto (30 min)Marc Andreessen (2023)
• OptionalSituational Awareness: The Decade AheadLeopold Aschenbrenner (2024)
• OptionalBet on Explosive AI-Driven Growth (5 min)Benjamin Moll and others (2026)
• OptionalSteven Pinker: Tech Billionaires Are Lying To Us About AI (Daniel Dushy Podcast) (1 hr 17 min)Daniel Dushy and Steven Pinker (2026)

Nature of Financial Work

• RequiredFinance Agent Benchmark v2 (15 min)Vals AI (2026)
• RecommendedGDPval: Measuring Model Performance on Real-World Tasks (7 min)OpenAI (2025)
• Recommended2026 Global Annual Survey Report on AI Use in Financial ServicesInstitute of International Finance and EY (2026)
• RecommendedIn the Age of AI, a Quant’s Edge Is Human (4 min)David G. Kabiller and Francesca Cornelli (2026)
• OptionalAdvancing Claude for Financial Services (7 min)Anthropic (2025)
• OptionalProfessional Reasoning Benchmark: Finance (3 min)Scale AI (2025)
• OptionalThe 2026 Global AI in Financial Services ReportCambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (2026)
• OptionalAI in Asset Management: A Live Catalog of Use CasesSimon Oh (2026)
• OptionalOur AI Midwife (8 min)Drew Housman (2026)