Google adds Nobel laureate Aghion to AI economics team
Google is expanding its AI & Economy Research Program with Nobel laureate Philippe Aghion as an adviser and two new directors, adding academic weight to its effort to measure AI's effects on work and productivity.
Google has announced a set of new advisers, fellows and research leads for its AI & Economy Research Program. The program studies the future of work, productivity and growth, how technology spreads globally, and AI's impact on scientific discovery.
Philippe Aghion, who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics and holds chairs at INSEAD and the Collège de France, joins as an Academic Advisor. He joins an advisory group that already includes Nobel laureate Michael Spence and Cambridge economist Dame Diane Coyle. Google says Aghion will apply his work on innovation-led growth and creative destruction to modeling AI's long-term macroeconomic path.
Ajay Agrawal of the University of Toronto's Rotman School joins as a Visiting Fellow. He will work with David Autor, head of MIT's economics department and an existing Fellow, on AI and scientific discovery, AI and robotics, and human welfare.
The program also has two new directors. Anu Madgavkar spent two decades at the McKinsey Global Institute, most recently as a Partner. She will lead empirical research on global AI diffusion, small businesses and the workforce effects of generative AI. Daniel Rock joins from Wharton. He is an AI2050 Early Career Fellow and MIT Digital Fellow, and he will lead work that combines "frontier model telemetry" with econometrics to study enterprise productivity and labor restructuring.
Madgavkar and Rock will co-lead the program with Alex Imas, Director of AGI Economics at Google DeepMind, and Zanna Iscenko of Google's Chief Economist's Office.
Google says the team will shape future updates to its AI & Economy ATLAS, a recently launched dataset that tracks how people use Google's AI tools. The post does not give a timeline or say which research it will publish next.