Economist: AI is a super-powered shirking technology, effort collapses when unobservable
_akpiper · x · 2026-11-12
Economist Paul Novosad argues that people reduce effort when it's unobservable — renters abusing rental cars, CEOs taking excess risk, referees phoning it in with AI. "AI is a super-powered shirking technology; it's inevitable that a lot of people are gonna use it to shirk." The original poster fully agrees.
A crisp behavioral-economics lens on how AI adoption reshapes incentives and monitoring in organizations.
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