By Laura Hyde |
The AI Economy Institute (AIEI) has enlisted a third cohort of researchers to further examine the adoption of AI across economies, industries and communities.
Microsoft’s flagship think-tank and research group, which launched in 2025, brings together outside experts and researchers to share their insights and advance the body of knowledge on topics related to AI, work and education.
The summer 2026 group, which is made up of 23 university professors and fellows from the USA, Canada, Netherlands, England, Germany, Italy, Hungry and other countries, will analyse frontier firms to examine both upstream, firm-level transformations and downstream, economy-wide impacts. They will also focus on understanding how frontier firms are reshaping work by exploring how AI adoption changes job design, skill demands, productivity and regional economic development. The group will generate the empirical evidence needed to provide policymakers, firms and institutions with a clearer basis for decision-making in a rapidly evolving AI economy.
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“AIEI’s first two cohorts explored how AI is reshaping the talent pipeline, from higher education and skills to K-12, community colleges and early-career pathways, so that we could understand and inform the early changes to the labour market,” said Juan Lavista Ferres, chief data scientist at Microsoft. “What we learned from that point of inquiry shifted the focus; this year’s cohort moves further into the economy itself, focusing on frontier firms and how leading organisations are adopting AI, redesigning work and creating the conditions for productivity, diffusion and human agency at scale.”
The full list of members in the summer 2026 cohort can be found on the Microsoft website.