Anthropic hires Stanford economist Chad Jones for its Anthropic Institute

In short: Anthropic is bringing in Stanford economist Chad Jones to work at its Anthropic Institute starting June 30.

What happened

Chad Jones, a well known economics professor at Stanford University, said on X that he will go on leave from Stanford and join Anthropic as of June 30. He said he will work at the Anthropic Institute, where he plans to keep researching how artificial intelligence could affect the economy, and to give seminars and talks.

Anthropic is an AI company known for building the Claude chatbot. It often presents itself as focused on safety and responsible use of AI, meaning it talks a lot about what could go wrong as well as what could go right.

The hire is getting attention because of Jones’s past writing about big trade-offs around AI progress. In a 2023 research paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research (a group that publishes economics studies), he discussed a hypothetical choice: accept a small chance each year of an “existential risk” (a risk that could end human life) in exchange for much higher living standards. Put simply, it is like arguing that a large payoff could be “worth” a serious risk.

Why it matters

AI companies increasingly influence jobs, prices, and what products get built, so they are hiring economists, not just engineers. Jones’s work also shows how some researchers try to put numbers on hard questions about safety, even when many people may disagree with the idea of treating human survival like a math problem.

Source: Financial Times