Stanford Digital Economy Lab / January 3, 2026

2025: DEL Year in Review

2025 may have been the Lab’s busiest year yet.

Here’s a look at just some of what we were up to.

We joined forces with Consumer Reports to make sure AI agents champion the consumer

Loyal Agents

Researchers: Sandy Pentland, Tobin South, Dazza Greenwood, Jiaxin Pei, Zexue He, Ben Moskowitz

Canaries in the Coal Mine broke new ground on understanding how AI is influencing employment

TIME · August 25, 2025

A New Stanford Analysis Reveals Who’s Losing Jobs to AI

These facts provide early large-scale evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the AI revolution is beginning to have a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the American labor market.”

Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence

Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen

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…but Canaries wasn’t the only product of our collaboration with ADP that provided vital insight

National Employment Report (ADP)

Researchers: Erik Brynjolfsson, Sarah Bana, J. Frank Li, Andrew Wang, Ruyu Chen

We invited world-renowned thought leaders to speak at our Seminar Series

Monday, May 5

David Autor: Does automation replace experts or augment expertise? The answer is YES.

Tuesday, April 8

Daniela Rus: Physical AI

Monday, March 3

Eduard Talamàs: Artificial Intelligence in the Knowledge Economy

And finally, our ambitious Digitalist Papers project returned with a new set of essays guiding AI policy to a better future

The Digitalist Papers

Researchers: Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek, Sandy Pentland, Daniel Susskind

We have a lot more in store for 2026.

But for now, we invite you to enjoy the insights, discoveries, and other exciting contributions we’ve already made to today’s discussion of the digital economy.

Thank you for your interest in all that we do!

View all work

Economics of Transformative AI

New Measures of the Economy

Digital Platforms and Society

AI Agents