New paper: AI-flagged papers acknowledge 21% fewer informal collaborators
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-11-04
A new paper by Jake Prokopets, Raymond Kim and Kris Gulati, "The Missing Colleague: AI and Informal Intellectual Collaboration," argues every scientific paper has two teams: named authors and the invisible network of colleagues who critique and improve the work — and AI may be shrinking the latter.
Key findings
- Combining AI-text classification with acknowledgments from 14,164 NBER and arXiv economics working papers, AI-flagged manuscripts acknowledge 21% fewer informal collaborators under researcher fixed effects and extensive controls — roughly one fewer intellectual contributor per paper.
- The negative association grows with AI intensity.
Two substitution channels
- Expertise substitution: AI replaces domain-specific feedback from same-topic colleagues (fewer same-topic acknowledgments).
- Access cost: AI reduces the need to seek costlier-to-reach expertise (fewer first-observed and cross-institution contributors).
Takeaway: AI may substitute for colleagues' intellectual contributions without reproducing the professional relationships through which knowledge and future collaborations circulate.
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