This talk explores the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) on online labor markets and their potential for modeling economic behavior. The first study examines how ChatGPT has influenced demand for freelancers, showing that while demand for substitutable skills declined by 20–50%, complementary skills saw mixed effects, with specialized expertise gaining prominence. The second study investigates whether LLMs can replicate human behavior in economic market experiments. While LLMs can mimic broad market trends with minimal memory and high variability, they exhibit less behavioral diversity than human participants. These findings provide insights into both the economic disruptions and modeling opportunities presented by LLMs.
About the speaker
About the speaker
Dr Maria del Rio-Chanona is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at University College London in the Computer Science department. Her research draws from network science, Large Language Models (LLM), as well as Agent-Based Models (ABM) to study the economic and employment impacts of the net-zero transition, the Covid-19 pandemic, and (Gen)AI.
Maria completed her PhD in mathematics at the University of Oxford, where she was part of the complexity economics group of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin School. She is a JSMF research fellow at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School. Maria has worked alongside international policy organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the International Labour Organization.
Dr Maria del Rio-Chanona is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at University College London in the Computer Science department. Her research draws from network science, Large Language Models (LLM), as well as Agent-Based Models (ABM) to study the economic and employment impacts of the net-zero transition, the Covid-19 pandemic, and (Gen)AI.
Maria completed her PhD in mathematics at the University of Oxford, where she was part of the complexity economics group of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin School. She is a JSMF research fellow at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School. Maria has worked alongside international policy organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the International Labour Organization.
