Benjamin Manning is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Management Science & Information Technology group at MIT Sloan. He is primarily an economist who studies AI agents in various settings. His research explores: (1) using AI systems as tools for studying human behavior, and (2) the implications of AI systems acting on behalf of humans—including their ability to represent preferences, facilitate information exchange, and make autonomous decisions. He examines both how we can construct new tools and the impacts of generative AI in real-world contexts.