{"paper":{"title":"Hope, Signals, and Silicon: A Game-Theoretic Model of the Pre-Doctoral Academic Labor Market in the Age of AI","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"econ.TH","authors_text":"Shaohui Wang","submitted_at":"2025-10-29T09:03:05Z","abstract_excerpt":"This paper develops a unified game-theoretic account of how generative AI reshapes the pre-doctoral \"hope-labor\" market linking Principal Investigators (PIs), Research Assistants (RAs), and PhD admissions. We integrate (i) a PI-RA relational-contract stage, (ii) a task-based production technology in which AI is both substitute (automation) and complement (augmentation/leveling), and (iii) a capacity-constrained admissions tournament that converts absolute output into relative rank. The model yields four results. First, AI has a dual and thresholded effect on RA demand: when automation dominate"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2511.00068","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2511.00068/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}