Alex Farach

Researcher at Microsoft

I work at the intersection of AI, economics, and how people actually get work done. At Microsoft, I study how tools like Copilot and AI agents change productivity in real organizations—not in theory, but through field experiments, surveys, and real deployments.

I've helped shape Microsoft's Work Trend Index and New Future of Work reports, and co-authored research on generative AI in real-world workplaces and on reframing AI as a new factor of production (Evolving the Productivity Equation, arXiv, 2025).

I'm drawn to messy questions: how humans adapt when intelligence becomes scalable, what we should measure versus what's easy to measure, and where economic intuition breaks down in an AI-augmented world. When I'm not working on that, I'm usually thinking about labor markets, building data tools, or playing jazz guitar.

Research Interests

AI & Productivity Labor Economics Field Experiments Occupational Analysis Future of Work

Notable Work