OpenAI's chief economist says researchers on his team need to be 'comfortable with being uncomfortable'

At OpenAI, understanding AI's impact on jobs is a job in itself.

Employees on the company's economic research team are tasked with studying how the technology is affecting workers, businesses, institutions, and the broader economy.

The ChatGPT maker's chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, says thriving in these roles takes a particular mix of skills and mindsets because AI's rapid evolution can quickly send the work in new directions.

For example, recursive self-improvement — the ability for AI systems to improve themselves — wasn't on Chatterji's radar a year ago but is now a topic his team is studying.

"The job description is changing a lot," he told Business Insider.

From the White House to OpenAI

Chatterji came to OpenAI in 2024 after stints at the highest levels of economic policymaking. He served in the Biden White House as coordinator of the $52 billion CHIPS program and as acting deputy director of the National Economic Council. Before that, he was chief economist at the Commerce Department. He has also spent much of his career at Duke University, where he is a professor of business and public policy.

OpenAI wasn't on Chatterji's radar. He was planning to write a book about his experience in government when a former colleague who had moved to the company reached out. They initially discussed supply chains and semiconductors — subjects Chatterji had studied and that mattered to OpenAI as it thought about the computing infrastructure needed to train and run its models. Eventually, the conversations broadened into how the company should think about the economics of AI.