Jan Kulveit

Or they may want to use some piece of math they like.

Or, they can have intuitive policy opinions, and the model could be selected so it supports some policy direction, this process is usually implicit and subconscious.

The bottom line is if we are interested in claims and predictions about reality, the main part of economic papers are assumptions and concepts used.

The math is usually right.

Heading.

Econ reasoning applied to post-AGI situations.

The basic problem with applying standard economic reasoning to post-AGI situations is that sufficiently advanced AI may violate many assumptions which make perfect sense in human economy, but may not generalize.

Often the assumptions are so basic that they are implicit, assumed in most econ papers, and out of sight in the usual examining the assumptions.

Also advanced AI may break some of the intuitions about how the world works, breaking the intuitive process upstream of formal arguments.

What complicates the matter is these assumptions often interact with considerations and disciplines outside of the core of economic discourse and are better understood and examined using frameworks from other disciplines.

To give two examples.

AI consumers.

Consumption so far was driven by human decisions and utility.

Standard economic models ultimately ground value in human preferences and utility.

Humans consume, humans experience satisfaction, and the whole apparatus of welfare economics and policy evaluation flows from this.

Firms are modeled as profit-maximizing, but profit is instrumental.

It flows to human owners and workers who then consume.

If AIs own capital and have preferences or goals of their own, this assumption breaks down.

If such AIs spent resources, this should likely count as consumption in the economic sense.

Preferences