The Economics of where AI meets Resistance
TransitionScience.ai is an independent research platform focused on AI transition frictions — the structured, persistent forces that govern the speed, shape, and distribution of AI's real-world impact.While most AI advisory sells acceleration, we study where and why the transition binds — across labor markets, institutions, value chains, and societies — and build the analytical instruments to diagnose it.
Research
The Frictions Project
AI capabilities are advancing fast. Their translation into economic and institutional outcomes is not. The gap is governed by frictions — in infrastructure, organizations, labor markets, governance, information systems, and human values — that are structured, measurable, and largely unmapped.The Frictions Project is building the vocabulary and diagnostic framework for this territory: a multi-scalar analysis of AI transition impediments grounded in diffusion theory, institutional economics, and global value chain analysis.
A Working Paper —"Naming the Frictions of the AI Transition" — is in preparation
The research bulletin of TransitionScience.ai — findings from the Frictions Project, grounded in primary sources.
instruments
Applied Diagnostics
The analytical framework behind the research produces instruments for institutions navigating the AI transition.
Higher Education
Institutional diagnostic assessing AI readiness, resilience, and capacity for reinvention. Validated with university leaders across Asia and the Pacific, Middle East, Europe, and the U.S.
Investors and education networks
Portfolio-level diagnostic for organizations managing multiple institutions, providing comparable analysis of AI-transition exposure across holdings.
Governments and multilaterals
Country- and sector-level friction diagnostics, extending the research framework to national AI strategies and regional economic planning. In development.
Tailored strategic engagements available for institutions navigating AI transition at any scale.
About
Phil Psilos
Founder of TransitionScience.ai. Thirty years in innovation systems, economic development, and human capital — spanning institutional roles at RTI International, FHI 360, the Perot Group, the National Governors Association, Deloitte, and Chemonics, with advisory work for the World Bank, USAID, AWS Educate, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Kaizenvest.Applied research includes the Innovation Ecosystem Assessment adopted as an RTI global product and credited with shaping the Philippine Innovation Act, global value chain and skills research with Gereffi et. al (Duke), and the Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability presented to World Bank Executive Directors, ILO, ADB, and UN leadership.MSc with Distinction, Economic Geography, London School of Economics. BA, Johns Hopkins University. Based in Virginia and Vietnam.