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LLMs now automate most real-effort tasks used in economic studies

A new study published on arXiv investigates the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) on real-effort tasks, commonly used in economic experiments. Researchers found that most of these tasks, which require cognitive effort and depend on actual performance, can now be accurately solved by LLMs at minimal cost. The study highlights that performance on these tasks improves with newer AI model generations, and even mid-tier models are rapidly automating them. This raises concerns about the validity of real-effort tasks in unsupervised settings, as observed performance may no longer reflect genuine human effort due to the ease of outsourcing to AI. AI

IMPACT Challenges the validity of traditional economic experiments relying on human effort, necessitating new methodologies to account for AI automation.

RANK_REASON The cluster contains an academic paper detailing research findings. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=1.0]

Read on arXiv cs.AI →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

COVERAGE [2]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 (CA) · Federico Belotti, Stefano Coniglio, Antonio Cosma, Francesco Fallucchi ·

    Artificial Effort

    arXiv:2605.23920v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Real-effort tasks, in which participants perform cognitively costly activities whose outcomes depend on actual performance, are widely used in experimental economics. Their validity, however, rests on the assumption that a human p…

  2. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Daniel C. Ruiz, Anna Serbina, Ashwin Rao, Emilio Ferrara, Luca Luceri ·

    How Far Will They Go? Red-Teaming Online Influence with Large Language Models

    arXiv:2605.22880v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As large language model (LLM)-based agents increasingly participate in online discourse, red-teaming their capacity to support political influence campaigns is critical for information integrity. In pursuit of this goal, we focus …