HAI Seminar: Industry Conversation with Instacart
AI adoption spreads via colleague social networks, driving measurable productivity gains on engineering teams
Instacart Economics researcher Alex Lenk presented findings at Stanford HAI showing that after institutional barriers to AI access are removed, social diffusion through colleague networks becomes the primary driver of AI implementation in companies. The research, conducted on engineering and data science teams at a large e-commerce firm, links peer-driven AI adoption to real productivity increases. Stanford's Arvina Krishnamurthy added an organizational lens on how AI tools reshape roles, expert power, and supervisory relationships at work.