|Talks|

Large Language Models: Impact on Online Labor Markets and Economic Modeling

London Seminar Series
Hybrid
Past Talk
Maria Del Rio-Chanona
Assistant Professor in Computer Science department at the University College London
Apr 2, 2025
11:00 am
Apr 2, 2025
11:00 am
In-person
Moretown
109
4 Thomas More St
London E1W 1YW, UK
The Roux Institute
Room
109
100 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Network Science Institute
11th floor
177 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Moretown
Room
109
58 St Katharine's Way
London E1W 1LP, UK

Talk recording

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
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.
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Apr 02, 2025