AI economic research is getting really good

AI tools have become shockingly good at carrying out much of the work produced by the economic profession — from the most elite halls of academia to think tanks, government agencies, consultancies, research shops and humble newsroom economics teams.The big picture: This fact raises important — and, we confess, unnerving — questions about the role of humans in making sense of the economy.It's hard to escape the sense that we are in an uncomfortable moment in which the capabilities of AI models to do economic research and analysis have far outpaced our understanding of how best to deploy and oversee it."Every conversation I have with a colleague at Harvard or a think tanker in D.C. is some combination of excitement, angst and confusion," Harved economist Jason Furman tells Axios.State of play: Furman, who was the top White House economist under President Obama and now co-teaches Harvard's signature introductory economics course, has created a site called Econvitals, which went live Friday, with a wide array of data and analysis.No single component of the site is earth-shatteringly new or cutting-edge. But neither is most economic analysis.What is stunning is that this is a site that…

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