Ajay is an economist and professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He conducts research on the economics of artificial intelligence, science and technology policy, and the geography of innovation. He has published over a hundred scholarly articles. He is the co-author of two best-selling books on the economics of artificial intelligence: Prediction Machines and Power & Prediction, both published by Harvard Business Review Press. He is co-editor of two scholarly books, The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda and Economics of AI: Healthcare Challenges, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Ajay is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts; an academic advisory council member at the Center on Regulation and markets at Brookings in Washington, DC; an advisory board member at Carnegie Mellon University’s Block Center for Technology and Society in Pittsburgh; and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Toronto. Ajay is the founder of the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a not-for-profit program with a mission to enhance the commercialization of science for the betterment of humankind. Graduates of the CDL have created over $30B in equity value. Ajay is a co-founder of Sanctuary that has a mission to create the world’s first human-like intelligence in general purpose robots. In 2022, Ajay was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor.