Overview

In the last decade distributed applications have revolutionized the collection of data. The spread of generative AI has enabled companies and governments to train models on this data with the potential to create replicas of professional intelligence. How will this explosion of modeled intelligence influence the role and power of professional workers? Which jobs will be highly valued? How should you negotiate the rights to your intellectual capital when it can be codified into an infinitely scalable AI model?

This course teaches you how information and artificial intelligence affect what deals are most valuable, and the right frameworks for choosing your expertise, packaging your expertise and striking a successful deal. The lessons will be most useful to anyone entering today’s labor market, entrepreneurs starting new ventures, and investors. Students will develop their strategy through simulated negotiation exercises, experience from guest speakers, and practice in the field along-side experts.

Educational Objectives

To get a sense for the fundamental shift in negotiating today’s labor market, consider the following: in today’s environment, your expertise can be codified. Consider the new Tom Hank’s film Here, where an AI model of Tom’s acting expertise can be used to face-swap and de-age him. Using similar technology, the emails, presentations and digital trail of your judgement on-the-job can be transformed into a model of your expertise that is disembodied, scaled, recombined and sold. How should you manage, price and negotiate over the data generated by your work? What if instead, you find yourself the owner of data generated by people you employ? How should you use it to remain competitive? What are the ethical and social implications of the choices you make? We will use theory and evidence from economics, law, and psychology to understand what your best strategy is, and to anticipate how the labor market and economy will be transformed by these negotiations in aggregate.

Using the lessons and frameworks we develop from examining the development of AI and data technologies we will examine individual choices you will need to make in an AI enabled world. These could include how you should negotiate your employment contracts or other business agreements, how to consider choices in your personal life and how to rethink the power of collective action in securing these rights in a changing environment. We will examine how to value and negotiate privacy. We will assess how the movement for greater transparency changes who gets what. Throughout, students will develop a process for recognizing the elements that have, and have not, changed fundamentally in the era of information access and exploitation.

Career Focus and Faculty

This course is designed to help students consider how to develop and value their expertise in a world where cognitive skills that were exclusively human are increasingly being built into models that can be scaled and continue to learn. It is being taught by Professors Zoe Cullen and Shikhar Ghosh. Prof Cullen is a leading labor economist whose research covers the impact of information and AI for firms, employees, and entrepreneurs. Prof Ghosh has been teaching courses on entrepreneurship and technology. He has built leading companies in the transition to the mobile and Internet economies. More recently he has been studying the development of AI and its likely social and business implications. Professors Cullen and Ghosh have designed this course to explore the implications of data and AI on the job market and offer practical insights to students who are entering the work force.

Grading / Course Administration

Students will participate in simulated negotiations; participation in these exercises (including written reflections) will account for 50% of the grade. The remainder will reflect participation in class.