How generative AI is reshaping the quantity and quality of expert analysis
We have entered an era of information abundance and trust scarcity. Thanks to AI, it’s easier than ever to generate clean, coherent, professional-sounding content, but some tend to assume that it isn’t worth their attention, confidence, or actual decision-making calculus This problem sits at the center of the new working paper “Generative AI Use by Capital Market Information Intermediaries: Evidence from Seeking Alpha,” co-written by Harvard Business School AI Institute associate Yuan Zou. They found a real-world setting where they could measure, with precision, what happens when AI-generated content floods an information ecosystem, and then gets abruptly removed from it. The results are more nuanced than either AI optimists or skeptics tend to allow.
Why This Matters
For business leaders and executives, this study is a masterclass in the strategic trade-offs of the AI era. It suggests that AI might not add value by replacing high-level human expertise, but can do so by expanding the boundaries of what is economically feasible to monitor and analyze. The decision to deploy AI doesn’t need to be about just doing the same things faster, but about doing things that were previously too expensive to do at all. A winning AI strategy is a hybrid approach: protect the human-led core of your firm while leveraging AI to cast a wider net, ensuring that no corner of your industry remains in the dark.
Link to the HBS AI Institute Insight Article
Link to the Research Paper
Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with HBS AI Institute news and research