How AI Aggregation Affects Knowledge

Daron Acemoglu, Tianyi Lin, Asuman Ozdaglar and James Siderius

No 35036, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) changes social learning when aggregated outputs become training data for future predictions. To study this, we extend the DeGroot model by introducing an AI aggregator that trains on population beliefs and feeds synthesized signals back to agents. We define the learning gap as the deviation of long-run beliefs from the efficient benchmark, allowing us to capture how AI aggregation affects learning. Our main result identifies a threshold in the speed of updating: when the aggregator updates too quickly, there is no positive-measure set of training weights that robustly improves learning across a broad class of environments, whereas such weights exist when updating is sufficiently slow. We then compare global and local architectures. Local aggregators trained on proximate or topic-specific data robustly improve learning in all environments. Consequently, replacing specialized local aggregators with a single global aggregator worsens learning in at least one dimension of the state.

JEL-codes: D80 D83 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
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