AI & Advanced Computing
Schmidt Sciences awards over $3 million to study AI’s impact on jobs
Jan 27, 2026
Researcher-led field experiments will explore how AI can support rather than supplant humans in a variety of workplaces worldwide
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jan. 27, 2026, 9 a.m. ET
Contact: Carlie Wiener [email protected]
NEW YORK—As part of its AI at Work program, Schmidt Sciences has awarded over $3 million to 19 real-world studies conducted by international labor economists about how AI is transforming jobs around the world, the organization announced today.
The awardees will each receive up to $200,000 to study how emerging AI technology is affecting worker productivity, wages, employment and careers, with the goal of uncovering where AI can provide the greatest value to labor markets and the global economy, and where AI’s impact will be felt most acutely.
Schmidt Sciences is supporting both work underway and commissioning new studies. Over the next two years, awardees will conduct randomized controlled trials and similar field studies in job sites ranging from banks to factories to laboratories to the gig economy.
“This technological revolution feels different,” said Michael Belinsky, director of the AI Institute at Schmidt Sciences. “Like previous revolutions, AI is automating tasks and amplifying human capabilities. But now modern AI tools affect not only routine manual activities, but also cognitive tasks. When you consider the variety of sectoral and institutional responses, as well as limited information about AI usage globally, the extent to which AI will affect the labor force remains uncertain.”
The 19 researchers leading these efforts, selected from more than 300 applicants, represent a variety of career levels, from PhD candidates to professors, and hail from 16 institutions in eight countries. Their projects reflect this global scope, exploring how AI affects loan officers at East African banks, employees at Southeast Asian small businesses, workers in the Chilean government, job seekers in Sierra Leone and American drivers competing with autonomous taxis.
AI at Work partnered with five leading economists to source, review, and select awardees. The review panel included MIT’s David Autor and Nobel Laureates in Economics Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, University of Pennsylvania’s Ioana Marinescu, University of Chicago’s John List, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT (JPAL), and research institution UNU-WIDER.
In addition to funding, Schmidt Sciences is providing awardees with connections to its grantee network, feedback on their projects and access to computing support.
“AI is set to transform many aspects of our lives, and the problem is, we don’t know in what way,” Acemoglu said. “The labor market is particularly vulnerable. I applaud all the exciting research that these awardees are embarking on.”
These projects will also inform ongoing work between The Rockefeller Foundation, Schmidt Sciences and other foundations on scenarios for AI’s impact on the labor markets. Last October, The Rockefeller Foundation collaborated with Schmidt Sciences to gather economists, AI companies and civic leaders at the Bellagio Center in Italy to develop scenarios that will inform actions that governments and companies can take to maximize the opportunities for AI to benefit the common good.
The winning projects are led by:
Youn Baek, postdoctoral associate, NYU Stern School of Business
The project analyzes how AI is reshaping the labor market for knowledge workers by examining whether it leads to talent concentration in large firms or fosters entrepreneurial opportunities and a broader distribution of talent across the innovation landscape.
Johanna Barop, doctoral candidate, Oxford University
The project investigates whether worker participation can guide firms’ AI adoption towards more equitable and productive outcomes that complement, rather than replace, human labor.
Daniel Björkegren, assistant professor, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
This study will examine how and whether AI tools can serve as a low-cost solution to the lack of trained medical professionals in under-resourced areas by providing training to pharmacists and other health professionals in the absence of doctors.
Silvia Castro, postdoctoral researcher, INSEAD and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Using a randomized controlled trial in major East African banks, this project will study the impact of firm-specific, customized GenAI tools on employee productivity, organizational structures, and efforts to expand financial inclusion in the Global South.
Richard Freund, Senior Research Associate, MIDE Development and Non-Resident Researcher, UN University World Institute for Development Economics Research
The project uses an AI recruitment assistant on a digital platform to help Kenyan small and medium enterprises (SMEs), exploring AI’s potential to reduce hiring frictions and improve worker-firm match quality in developing labor markets.
Paul Gertler, Li Ka Shing Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
This project will test new AI tools in collaboration with the government of Chile to make public procurement more efficient, transparent and inclusive, potentially offering a scalable model for governments worldwide.
Luca Henkel, assistant professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam
This project will study real-world applications of AI to assess how AI-based personalization influences worker adoption and interaction with new AI tools—with the goal of ensuring that workplace AI technologies are developed and governed in ways that yield positive outcomes for humans.
Mitchell Hoffman, Richard F. Aster Jr. Professor of Economics, UC Santa Barbara
This project will study the impact of AI on the productivity and compensation of disabled versus non-disabled food delivery workers.
Ben Hyman, economist and senior researcher, California Policy Lab, UCLA
This project will investigate whether existing job training programs can help workers pursue AI-specific training to adjust to market changes driven by the technology.
Brian Jabarian, Howard & Nancy Marks Fellow (postdoctoral), University of Chicago Booth School of Business
This project leverages large-scale field experiments embedded in live business processes at PSG Global Solutions and Teleperformance to generate causal evidence on how AI automation and augmentation reshape work, organizational design, and firm decision-making in global markets.
Hyunjin Kim, assistant professor, INSEAD
This project will study how small and medium enterprises adopt and are affected by AI in a randomized AI rollout to more than 1.2 million businesses across Southeast Asia.
Tim Köhler, research fellow, University of Cape Town and research associate, Stellenbosch University
Through a randomized controlled trial in South Africa, this project will generate the first evidence of its kind on how an AI career guidance tool influences the labor market outcomes, career decisions and employment prospects of unemployed youth in developing countries.
Johanna Barop, doctoral candidate, Oxford University
Joseph Levine, doctoral candidate, Oxford University
This project will use a randomized controlled trial in Sierra Leone to study the labor market effects of providing low-income, low-connectivity communities with access to an AI model through text messages.
Benjamin Manning, doctoral candidate, MIT Sloan School of Management
This project uses randomized field experiments on the Upwork platform to measure how autonomous AI agents, representing job seekers and employers, affect labor market efficiency, match quality, and search costs, offering a potential blueprint for how AI might improve market outcomes.
Kristina McElheran, associate professor, University of Toronto
This project will link a large-scale survey of firm-level AI use with comprehensive U.S. employment records to investigate how AI adoption by U.S. firms has affected worker wages, employment, and career trajectories across demographic groups and regions since 2017.
Jiarui (Jerry) Qian, doctoral candidate, University of Virginia
This project will investigate how AI tools that automate research affect how scientists spend their time, decide what projects to pursue and allocate talent and funding.
Simon Quach, assistant professor, University of Southern California
This project uses bank and credit card data to study how Uber and Lyft ride-share drivers adapt their earnings, employment, and consumption patterns in response to job competition from Waymo’s autonomous vehicles.
Jorge Tamayo, assistant professor, Harvard Business School
This project will evaluate the impact of a new industrial copilot AI tool on the productivity, autonomy, and job satisfaction of blue- and white-collar workers in real production settings.
Nety Wu, doctoral candidate, INSEAD
This project will investigate the deployment of an AI system in the research and development department of the food and consumer goods company to understand how AI influences innovation quality, experimentation and novel solutions.
The AI at Work program plans to issue additional calls for proposals in 2026. Learn more about the program here.
About Schmidt Sciences
Schmidt Sciences is a nonprofit organization founded in 2024 by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that works to accelerate scientific knowledge and breakthroughs with the most promising, advanced tools to support a thriving planet. The organization prioritizes research in areas poised for impact including AI and advanced computing, astrophysics, biosciences, climate, and space—as well as supporting researchers in a variety of disciplines through its science systems program.
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