Anthropic's New Connector Lets You Query Real AI-Usage Data in Claude
By Steven Van ·
The Anthropic Economic Index connector turns a research dataset into a conversation: ask Claude how AI is used across jobs, regions, and tasks and get…
Anthropic took one of its most-cited research projects and made it something you can just talk to. A new connector plugs the Anthropic Economic Index, its ongoing measurement of how AI is actually used across the economy, directly into Claude, so instead of digging through a dataset you ask a question in plain language and get an answer grounded in the real numbers.
Turning a dataset into a conversation
The Economic Index tracks how people use AI across occupations, regions, and tasks. Historically that lived as downloadable data and reports, useful, but only if you knew how to parse it. The connector removes that barrier: ask "which occupations use AI the most?" or "what tasks do teachers use Claude for?" and Claude answers from the Index, with source citations so you can trust and trace the result. It's the difference between a spreadsheet and a research assistant who has read it.
Frictionless by design
The practical details are what make it usable. It works across all Claude models, needs no installation, and takes roughly a minute to switch on from the connectors menu in claude.ai. And it doesn't lock the data away, the full datasets remain freely available on Anthropic's website for anyone who wants to go deeper. The connector is the fast path, not a paywall.
Who it's for
Anthropic aims this at researchers, journalists, and policymakers, but the honest audience is broader: anyone curious how AI fits into their field or their day. For creators specifically, it's a quick way to see how your own line of work shows up in real usage data, which tasks people are already handing to AI, and where the human still leads. That's genuinely useful context for anyone deciding where to lean on these tools.
Part of a bigger push
The connector lands the same week as Claude for Teachers, and together they signal a theme: Anthropic making its work legible and usable to non-technical audiences, education on one side, economic transparency on the other. Grounding answers in a citable dataset also quietly models the behavior everyone wants from AI, claims you can check. You can enable it now from the connectors menu in Claude; details are in Anthropic's announcement.
Sources: Anthropic.