The Measurement Revolution? Credible Measurement and Inference in the Age of AI -- by Melissa Dell, Ashesh Rambachan

An NBER working paper by Melissa Dell and Ashesh Rambachan outlines how AI is revolutionizing economic measurement by converting unstructured data like text and images into structured variables at scale. Because this shift allows multiple plausible measures that can yield conflicting empirical conclusions, the authors emphasize that credible inference requires rigorously designed validation rather than informal proxy assumptions. This guidance is vital for economics and data science faculty preparing researchers to maintain econometric rigor when deploying AI-generated variables.

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