New experts join Google’s AI & Economy team

Sep 18, 2026

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Nobel Laureate Philippe Aghion, Professor Ajay Agrawal, and leading researchers join Google’s AI & Economy program to expand our scientific understanding of AI’s impact on economic activity worldwide.

Scott Strand

Head of StratOps and Special Projects, Technology & Society

Zanna Iscenko

AI & Economy Lead, Chief Economist's Office

We recently launched the AI & Economy ATLAS v1.0 and its interactive open-access site to understand how people are using Google’s AI tools at work and in their daily lives. But tracking adoption patterns is only the beginning. As artificial intelligence reshapes jobs, businesses, and everyday lives, navigating this shift requires a multidisciplinary approach that unites fine-grained data with rigorous economic inquiry.

To further help organizations, workers, researchers, and policymakers make sense of this complex transition, we are expanding our AI & Economy Research Program , and welcoming world-class economists to help build and lead this work.

Technological shifts are rarely instantaneous. Our program measures and analyzes this evolution in real time, focusing on core areas including the future of work, productivity and growth, global technology diffusion, and AI’s impact on scientific discovery.

Expanding our scientific expertise and engagement

Executing a research agenda of this scope requires deep collaboration among academia, industry leaders, and policymakers. To expand our scientific capacity and engage more deeply with these diverse stakeholders, we are bringing together leading external advisors, visiting scholars, and dedicated research program leadership. Joining us as Academic Advisors and Visiting Fellows:

- Philippe Aghion, Academic Advisor: Professor Aghion, 2025 Nobel Laureate in Economics and the Kurt Björklund Chaired Professor at INSEAD and the Collège de France, joins our advisory group alongside Nobel Laureate Michael Spence and Cambridge’s Dame Diane Coyle, applying his pioneering work on innovation-led growth and creative destruction to model AI's long-term macroeconomic trajectory.

- Ajay Agrawal, Visiting Fellow: Professor Agrawal joins our Visiting Fellows program, where he will collaborate closely with David Autor, a current Fellow and head of MIT’s Department of Economics. Professor Agrawal, who holds the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and is a Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, will advance our core research on the economics of AI and scientific discovery, AI and robotics, and how AI can expand the frontier of human welfare.

To steer empirical projects and integrate insights across our agenda, we are also introducing two renowned researchers as Directors of Google’s AI & Economy Research Program:

- Anu Madgavkar: Formerly a Partner at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Madgavkar joins Google following a two-decade career leading global research on labor markets, technology adoption, and structural economic transitions. She has frequently advised governments, multilateral institutions, and business leaders worldwide, contributing regularly to the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. At Google, she will lead empirical research on global AI diffusion, small business ecosystems, and the workforce impacts of generative AI.

- Daniel Rock: Joining from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Rock is a leading economist on AI and labor, having co-authored foundational papers on technological transitions. An AI2050 Early Career Fellow and MIT Digital Fellow, he will lead Google's empirical research, bridging frontier model telemetry with rigorous econometrics to analyze enterprise productivity, labor restructuring, and scientific discovery.

Anu Madgavkar and Daniel Rock will lead Google's AI & Economy Research Program alongside Alex Imas, Director of AGI Economics at Google DeepMind, and Zanna Iscenko, AI & Economy Lead, in Google's Chief Economist's Office.

Shaping future research and collective impact

Maximizing AI’s economic opportunity while mitigating disruption requires sustained partnership. This expanded team of experts will serve as a scientific bridge, directly informing future ATLAS updates and empirical research.

Together, we will focus on identifying the organizational practices, public policy frameworks, and training programs needed to ensure AI upskills workers, democratizes expertise, and drives broadly shared prosperity.

To learn more, read our latest research publications, and interact with our latest global data, visit ai.google/economy .

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