1. events
  2. all
  3. 2026

2026 Mellichamp Initiative in Mind & Machine Intelligence Summit AI and Economics

Date Start
Date End
May 29, 2026
Location
Henley Hall 1010
Event Banner

  Free Event, Registration Required: REGISTER HERE

 

Overview

The 2026 Mellichamp Initiative in Mind & Machine Intelligence Summit: AI and Economics will be held at UC Santa Barbara on May 29th, bringing together leading researchers and economists to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping labor, policy, human behavior, and human-AI collaboration. The summit will feature keynote talks, research presentations, and interdisciplinary discussions on the economic and societal implications of rapidly advancing AI systems.

 

 Program

8:00am        Breakfast
     
8:30am   Opening Remarks
Max H. Farrell & Miguel Eckstein, UC Santa Barbara
     
8:45am   Keynote 1: “Designing Human-AI Collaboration: A Sufficient Statistic Approach”
Nikhal Agarwal, MIT
     
9:30am   Keynote 2: "Can we automate policy evaluation?"
David Yanagizawa-Drott, University of Zurich
     
10:15am   Coffee Break
     
10:45am   “A Unifying Framework for Robust and Efficient Inference with Unstructured Data"
Melissa Dell, Harvard
     
11:15am   “From Next-Token Prediction to Automata Induction: Theory and Applications”
Ashesh Rambachan, MIT
     
11:45am   “(Artificial) Intelligence Saturation and the Future of Work”
Ioana Marinescu, University of Pennsylvania
     
12:15pm   Lunch
     
1:30pm   "AI Advice and Human Beliefs"
Daniel Martin, UCSB
     
2:00pm   “AI-Assisted Programming and Labor Demand”
Lindsey Raymond, MIT
     
2:30pm   “How Well do LLMs Predict Human Behavior? A Measure of their Pretrained Knowledge”
Annie Liang, Northwestern University
     
3:00pm   Coffee Break
     
3:30pm   “AI Agents and Higher-Order Work”
Suproteem Sarkar, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
     
4:00pm   Keynote 3: “AI Capabilities: What We Know Now, What to Expect”
Tom Cunningham, METR
     
4:45pm   Closing Remarks
Max H. Farrell & Miguel Eckstein, UC Santa Barbara

 Organizers

  • Max Farrel, Economics, UCSB
  • Miguel Eckstein, Psychological & Brain Sciences, UCSB

 Speakers

  • Nikhal Agarwal (MIT)
  • David Yanagizawa-Drott (University of Zurich)
  • Tom Cunningham (METR)
  • Melissa Dell (Harvard)
  • Ashesh Rambachan (MIT)
  • Ioana Marinescu (University of Pennsylvania)
  • Daniel Martin (UCSB)
  • Lindsey Raymond (MIT)
  • Annie Liang (Northwestern University)
  • Suproteem Sarkar (University of Chicago, Booth School of Business)

Directions