arXiv subjects

Manav Raj

Publications and source records attributed to Manav Raj.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Strategic Responses to Technological Change: Evidence from Online Labor Markets

In this project, we examine how freelancers changed their strategic positioning on an online work platform following the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 - a major advance in AI technologies. We document that post-ChatGPT, freelancers bid on fewer jobs and reposition themselves by differentiating their distribution of bids (i.e., job applications) relative to their prior behavior. We disentangle heterogeneity in strategic responses by exploring how exposure to changes in demand or supply shape incumbent repositioning. We find that the launch of ChatGPT was associated with a short-term decrease in labor demand and an increase in labor supply, though these changes vary across work domains. In response to decreases in labor demand, workers changed their horizontal positioning and withdrew from the platform. In response to increases in labor supply, workers were less likely to decrease bidding or reposition horizontally but shifted their vertical position by targeting lower-value jobs. We further show that repositioning is less likely for high-skill freelancers who face greater adjustment costs. This research contributes to our understanding of how and why workers respond to technological change in the context of recent advances in AI technologies.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

Art-ificial Intelligence: The Effect of AI Disclosure on Evaluations of Creative Content

The emergence of generative AI technologies, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, has expanded the scope of tasks that AI tools can accomplish and enabled AI-generated creative content. In this study, we explore how disclosure regarding the use of AI in the creation of creative content affects human evaluation of such content. In a series of pre-registered experimental studies, we show that AI disclosure has no meaningful effect on evaluation either for creative or descriptive short stories, but that AI disclosure has a negative effect on evaluations for emotionally evocative poems written in the first person. We interpret this result to suggest that reactions to AI-generated content may be negative when the content is viewed as distinctly "human." We discuss the implications of this work and outline planned pathways of research to better understand whether and when AI disclosure may affect the evaluation of creative content.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

How will Language Modelers like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries?

Recent dramatic increases in AI language modeling capabilities has led to many questions about the effect of these technologies on the economy. In this paper we present a methodology to systematically assess the extent to which occupations, industries and geographies are exposed to advances in AI language modeling capabilities. We find that the top occupations exposed to language modeling include telemarketers and a variety of post-secondary teachers such as English language and literature, foreign language and literature, and history teachers. We find the top industries exposed to advances in language modeling are legal services and securities, commodities, and investments. We also find a positive correlation between wages and exposure to AI language modeling.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2020

COVID-19 and Digital Resilience: Evidence from Uber Eats

Using order-level data from Uber Technologies, we study how the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing shutdown of businesses in the United States in 2020 affected small business restaurant supply and demand on the Uber Eats platform. We find evidence that small restaurants experience significant increases in activity on the platform following the closure of the dine-in channel. We document how locality- and restaurant-specific characteristics moderate the size of the increase in activity through the digital channel and explain how these increases may be due to both demand- and supply-side shock. We observe an increase in the intensity of competitive effects following the economic shock and show that growth in the number of providers on a platform induces both market expansion and heightened inter-provider competition. Higher platform activity in response to the shock does not only have short-run implications: restaurants with larger demand shocks had a higher on-platform survival rate one year after the lockdown, suggesting that the platform channel contributes towards long-run resilience following a crisis. Our findings document the heterogeneous effects of platforms during the pandemic, underscore the critical role that digital technologies play in enabling business resilience in the economy, and provide insight into how platforms can manage competing incentives when balancing market expansion and growth goals with the competitive interests of their incumbent providers.

econ.GN↗