'The economy is for people': an economist takes a leading role at Newman's AI institute

Bekah Selby-Leach, Ph.D., has spent the past decade measuring what happens to Kansas towns when the economy shifts. She has decided the next shift — the one driven by artificial intelligence — is worth changing jobs for.

Selby-Leach, an economist who led Wichita State University’s Center for Economic Development and Business Research, has joined Newman University as associate director of the Newman Institute for AI & the Common Good. She is the institute’s first associate director, arriving to help build the programs it has promised to Kansas employers, students and community partners.

An economist, not a technologist

She is also an economist who thinks the market is about to fail the people it is supposed to serve.

“My philosophy regarding the economy has always been, ‘the economy is for people,'” Selby-Leach said. “If the system is not benefiting humanity as a whole, then there is a market failure and intervention is needed. Right now, we are at the cusp of a massive market failure where incentives to displace human efforts far outweigh those to amplify dignifying work.”

That is the problem the institute was built to work on. Newman’s board of trustees established it in June around a straightforward idea: AI should serve people rather than push them to the margins. The institute is not starting from scratch.

“Over the past year, we’ve trained several hundred professionals and worked alongside companies across the region, and they have told us what they want,” said David Cochran, Ph.D., dean for AI and emerging technologies at Newman University and director of the institute.

Making work more meaningful

According to Cochran, those professionals want to implement AI that “builds their people’s capabilities and makes work more meaningful,” as opposed to replacing their work with technology.

“Bekah has spent her career helping Kansas organizations make hard decisions with good information,” Cochran said. “She is the right person to turn what we have learned into programs employers can use now.”

Selby-Leach comes to the role from the WSU center that produces the state’s economic conditions research, where she became a regular voice on the regional economy for business groups, public officials and media. She also served as interim director of Wichita State’s Center for Real Estate. Prior to that, she spent seven years at Emporia State University as a tenured associate professor of economics and the founding director of its Center for Decision Science.

When asked what “AI and the common good” means in practice, Selby-Leach answered in terms of two Kansas towns.

“Business owners in Garden City will lean into it for things like business research, document creation and product development, increasing efficiency and equity of access to information and decision-augmenting tools,” Selby-Leach said. “Students in Wichita are preparing to enter a labor force where many businesses have massive incentives to displace human contributors through automation. More than this, they will need to know how to use the tools to amplify their own abilities and prospects, to create their own businesses or fill highly technical roles at existing companies.”

What she will help build

She is joining work already in motion, not a standing start.

“There is already a great deal of work underway at the institute, and I plan to help amplify and grow it,” Selby-Leach said. “Success relies on leaning into partnerships and the convergence of ideas.”

That instinct for partnership is also how she reads the state she will work in.

“Kansans are remarkable in their ability to forge alliances despite constant market pressures to compete,” Selby-Leach said. “This cooperative and collaborative nature will deeply benefit the institute and has the potential to mutually uplift the entire system.”

Selby-Leach holds a doctorate and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Oregon and a bachelor’s degree in economics with mathematics from Eastern Washington University. In 2022, she received the John Saltmarsh National Award for Civic Engagement from the American Democracy Project. She lives in Derby, Kansas.

The institute’s first public bootcamp, AI for Professional Productivity, is scheduled for Sept. 10 at Garden City Community College, the first institution to join the institute’s statewide AI Education Alliance.