AI laundering human work and knowledge. We urgently need better provenance tracing teppofelin.substack.com/p/ai-has-a-r...
AI has a “rabbit laundering” problem
How AI magically pulls human knowledge out of the hat
teppofelin.substack.com
Teppo Felin
@teppofelin.bsky.social
ion foundation endowed prof | university of utah | cognition, AI, generative rationality, theory-based view, causal reasoning, economics, strategy
Causal Data Science Meeting November 4-5, 2026 an online conference Fantastic participants, companies, and past keynotes (Judea Pearl, Silivia Chiappa, Guido Imbens, Sara Magliacane, Elias Bareinboim, Sean Taylor, Dominik Janzing, Susan Athey). Will try to deliver. causalscience.org
Causal Data Science Meeting - Home
Fostering a dialogue between industry and academia on causal data science.
causalscience.org
Where do new technologies and innovations come from? Madison Singell and I take up this question in our forthcoming paper in European Economic Review
Check out the latest from the SSRN #blog which includes the top downloaded papers on #AI in #Finance for Q2 of 2025. Read more: http://spkl.io/63324A8T4a #FInanceSky #AICommunity
Top Papers on AI in Finance
This list includes the top downloaded papers on AI in Finance posted in Q1 2025. It also includes the Top 5 Organizations that downloaded the research during this period.
spkl.io
I started a new job today: I'll be the Ion Foundation Endowed Prof at the University of Utah - also Co-Director of the Ion Management Science Lab with Todd Zenger. Very excited to work with Todd and brilliant colleagues.
LLMs are good at predicting—does that scale to decision making? No, argue Sako & Felin, they cannot envision possibilities beyond existing data, generate new hypotheses or run experiments to get new data—essential for general real-world decisions: buff.ly/dTxZw3Q
Super important paper on the limits of AI in decision-making, especially as the "AI first" trend escalates and we try to understand cases where AI should NOT be used. Key takeaways from the paper:
Does #AI Prediction Scale to #DecisionMaking? The authors argue that there are fundamental limits to AI’s predictive paradigm. Authors: Mari Sako & Teppo Felin Read More: http://spkl.io/63325fAN9T
When should you use AI, and when not? This paper—with Mari Sako and @jessicahullman.bsky.social—provides some criteria: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Comments on the paper are definitely welcome. Just DM me/us.
Artificial Intelligence and Actor-Specific Decisions
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly seen as potentially replacing humans in decision making and problem solving across numerous domains. We argue that
papers.ssrn.com
Congrats to our daughter Dr Emma Felin! She just successfully defended her doctoral thesis @ox.ac.uk
11 years later, I still think the frame problem is a knock down argument against AI (when it comes to novelty) See this 2014 piece with Stuart Kauffman et al: drive.google.com/file/d/1yrID...
Ask your ChatGPT this question: "Alice has 4 brothers and 1 sister. How many sisters does Alice’s brother have?" I did - just now. See below. These types of problems provide a window into key issues with AI.
Tens of thousands of psychological measures have been created, but 79% are not reused more than twice. In a new article in NHB lead by @faridanvari.bsky.social and @ruben.the100.ci we quantify this fragmentation in psychology's measures and propose solutions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The ACM piece with Mari Sako is now online cacm.acm.org/opinion/does...
Does AI Prediction Scale to Decision Making? – Communications of the ACM
cacm.acm.org
Does AI prediction scale to decision making? A short piece with Mari Sako.
This list of readings (by Jessica Hullman) should be required for anyone dealing with AI and decision making.
The Bayesian Entrepreneurship conference in Milan (SDA Bocconi) was fantastic. Big-time thanks to Arnaldo Camuffo Alfonso Gambardella Ajay Agrawal Joshua Gans Erin L Scott Scott Stern. #bayesian
A debate - does Lean Startup represent a giant leap? with Chris Tucci, Yuliya Snihur and Elena Novelli doi.org/10.1080/1366...
A debate: does Lean Startup represent a giant leap?
The Lean Startup approach, introduced by Eric Ries in 2011, has become a widely recognised method in entrepreneurship, emphasising rapid experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative developmen...
doi.org
For anyone interested: a free webinar on Lean and the Scientific Method (Mon, March 10, noon EST). I'll be doing a short presentation of our paper "A Scientific Method for Startups" - with Gambardella Novelli Zenger. Great lineup: Blank Gruber Barney Alvarez Sarasvathy Bacq Zott McGrath etc.
Felin, Teppo, Stuart Kauffman, Roger Koppl, and Giuseppe Longo. 2014. “Economic Opportunity and Evolution: Beyond Landscapes and Bounded Rationality.” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 8 (4): 269–82. doi.org/10.1002/sej.....
Economic Opportunity and Evolution: Beyond Landscapes and Bounded Rationality
The nature of economic opportunity has recently received significant attention in entrepreneurship, organization science and strategy. The notion of boundedly rational search on an (NK) opportunity l...
doi.org
Good read! New paper in Strategy Science: Theory Is All You Need: AI, Human Cognition, and Causal Reasoning, by Teppo Felin and Matthias Holweg pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10....
Theory Is All You Need: AI, Human Cognition, and Causal Reasoning | Strategy Science
pubsonline.informs.org