CHRIS ROHLFS

Data scientist & economist  •  Author of Fame Machines

Staff Data Scientist (AI/ML), MagicSchool AI — safety & quality for classrooms

• Ex–Morgan Stanley (11 years) — Executive Director, predictive modeling

• Two doctorates (Chicago, Columbia): trained by Freakonomics author Steve Levitt

• Foreign Affairs “MRAP Boondoggle” — pickup: NYT, USA Today, Time, HBR

• Talks at American Economic Association, MIT, Pentagon, West Point

• 20+ articles in economics, AI, and neuroscience

I’m Chris Rohlfs—a data scientist and economist who studies how ideas spread—and why some get amplified while others never get a first look. Fame Machines reverse-engineers the systems that route attention (filters, hubs, halos, and feedback loops) and turns them into practical moves writers, creators, and builders can actually use.

I’ve worked across academia as an econ professor, on Wall Street, and now in AI. I also release music as Moose, which gave me an on-the-ground education in playlists, gatekeepers, and the attention gap that helped spark this book.

I designed the visuals for Fame Machines using a mix of code-based generation, digital editing, and generative AI. I live in Savannah, Georgia with my wife Stephanie and a growing collection of houseplants.