Who Uses AI? Platforms, Workforce, and AI Exposure
For researchers measuring AI's impact on employment, the paper reveals that existing exposure metrics are contaminated by platform-specific user demographics, leading to unreliable conclusions.
The paper shows that AI exposure measures from platform conversation logs partly reflect platform user base rather than workforce, causing estimates to vary by a factor of 1.9 across platforms and change sign across consumer/enterprise channels. Reweighting to workforce shares attenuates estimates by 42-93%.
A growing literature uses artificial intelligence platform conversation logs to measure occupation exposure. We show that these scores partly measure platform user base rather than the workforce. Holding outcome, sample, controls, and estimator fixed while varying only the platform input changes the post-ChatGPT employment coefficient by a factor of 1.9, and within-vendor consumer-versus-enterprise channels produce estimates that disagree in sign. Reweighting to Bureau of Labor Statistics workforce shares attenuates estimates by 42 to 93 percent. We formalize the non-classical measurement error, derive probability limits and partial-identification bounds for employment elasticities. The bias understates substitution more than augmentation.