Hello! I am a PhD student in Economics at Harvard. My current research interests include political economy, IO, and trade in the context of frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence. I am also an affiliate at Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and Center for International Development. I graduated from the University of Chicago with a BS in computational and applied math and a BA in economics. My CV is located here.
Publications
“AI-tocracy” with Martin Beraja, David Yang, and Noam Yuchtman — Quarterly Journal of Economics (2023)
Press: NYT CSIS Harvard Gazette IEEE Spectrum MIT Technology Review
Abstract
Recent scholarship has suggested that artificial intelligence technology and autocratic regimes may be mutually reinforcing. We test for such a mutually reinforcing relationship in the context of facial recognition AI in China. To do so, we gather comprehensive data on AI firms and government procurement contracts, as well as on social unrest across China during the last decade. We first show that autocrats benefit from AI: local unrest leads to greater government procurement of facial recognition AI as a new technology of political control, and increased AI procurement indeed suppresses subsequent unrest. We then show that AI innovation benefits from autocrats’ suppression of unrest: the contracted AI firms innovate more both for the government and commercial markets, and are more likely to export their products; and non-contracted AI firms do not experience detectable negative spillovers. Taken together, these results suggest the possibility of sustained AI innovation under the Chinese regime: AI innovation entrenches the regime, and the regime’s investment in AI for political control stimulates further frontier innovation.
“Protests” with Davide Cantoni, David Yang, and Noam Yuchtman - Annual Review of Economics (2024)
Abstract
Citizens have long taken to the streets to demand change, expressing political views that may otherwise be suppressed. Protests have produced change at local, national, and international scales, including spectacular moments of political and social transformation. We document five new empirical patterns describing 1.2 million protest events across 218 countries between 1980 and 2020. First, autocracies and weak democracies experienced a trend break in protests during the Arab Spring. Second, protest movements also rose in importance following the Arab Spring. Third, protest movements geographically diffuse over time, spiking to their peak, before falling off. Fourth, a country’s year-to-year economic performance is not strongly correlated with protests; individual values are predictive of protest participation. Fifth, the US, China, and Russia are the most over-represented countries by their share of academic studies. We discuss each pattern’s connections to the existing literature and anticipate paths for future work.
Working papers
“Exporting the Surveillance State via Trade in AI” with Martin Beraja, David Yang, and Noam Yuchtman
NBER working paper (September 2023)
We document three facts about the global diffusion of surveillance AI technology, and in particular, the role played by China. First, China has a comparative advantage in this technology. It is substantially more likely to export surveillance AI than other countries, and particularly so as compared to other frontier technologies. Second, autocracies and weak democracies are more likely to import surveillance AI from China. This bias is not observed in AI imports from the US or in imports of other frontier technologies from China. Third, autocracies and weak democracies are especially more likely to import China’s surveillance AI in years of domestic unrest. Such imports coincide with declines in domestic institutional quality more broadly. To the extent that China may be exporting its surveillance state via trade in AI, this can enhance and beget more autocracies abroad. This possibility challenges the view that economic integration is necessarily associated with the diffusion of liberal institutions.
“Evaluating Large Language Models’ Capability to Launch Fully Automated and Personalized Phishing Campaigns: Validated on Human Subjects” with Fredrik Heiding, Simon Lermen, Arun Vishwanath, and Bruce Schneier
Working paper (November 2024)
2 min. summary Press: Hacker News Zvi Moshowitz Daniel Miessler MalwareBytes CivAI
Abstract
In this paper, we evaluate the capability of large language models to conduct personalized phishing attacks and compare their performance with human experts and AI models from last year. We include four email groups with a combined total of 101 participants: A control group of arbitrary phishing emails, which received a click-through rate (recipient pressed a link in the email) of 12%, emails generated by human experts (54% click-through), fully AI-automated emails 54% (click-through), and AI emails utilizing a human-in-the-loop (56% click-through). Thus, the AI-automated attacks performed on par with human experts and 350% better than the control group. The results are a significant improvement from similar studies conducted last year, highlighting the increased deceptive capabilities of AI models. Our AI-automated emails were sent using a custom-built tool that automates the entire spear phishing process, including information gathering and creating personalized vulnerability profiles for each target. The AI-gathered information was accurate and useful in 88% of cases and only produced inaccurate profiles for 4% of the participants. We also use language models to detect the intention of emails. Claude 3.5 Sonnet scored well above 90% with low false-positive rates and detected several seemingly benign emails that passed human detection. Lastly, we analyze the economics of phishing, highlighting how AI enables attackers to target more individuals at lower cost and increase profitability by up to 50 times for larger audiences.
Works in progress
“Puppetmasters or Pawns? The Power of Congressional Staffers” with Sara Ji
“Economic Espionage and Knowledge Diffusion Under US-China Rivalry” with Karthik Tadepalli
Policy Articles
- “How the surveillance state is exported through trade in AI” VoxDev column (September 2023)
- “Autocratic AI dystopias: From science fiction to social science fact” with Martin Beraja, David Yang, and Noam Yuchtman. VoxDev column (May 2023)
- “Autocratic AI dystopias: From science fiction to social science fact” with Martin Beraja, David Yang, and Noam Yuchtman. VoxEU column (December 2021)
