AI Agents & Economics

What does the presence of truly intelligent agents do to basic assumptions of economics?

Call to action: AI will completely transform the economy, its critical we ensure it serves its ultimate purpose: to increase the well-being of its living participants.

A brief talk drawing from various sources, and my own conjecture.

Transcript

1. AI Agents &
   Economics
   Implications, Speculations, and Risks
   “What does the presence of truly intelligent agents
   do to basic assumptions of economics?”
   Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan
   robin@pathwayi.com
   Pathway Intelligence Inc
   Now: Beyond
   Prediction to...
   Action!
   

   View Slide

2. AI Agents & Economics, 2021 Robin Chauhan robin@pathwayi.com
   Factors of Production
   Land + Natural
   Resources
   Data
   Capital Compute, (Software?)
   Labour AI Agent as worker *
   Entrepreneur AI Agent as manager **
   Owner AI Agent as a “numbered
   company” ***
   From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_market
   Management replacement:
   “Manna: Two Views of
   Humanity’s Future”, Brain 2003
   “Now, with AI, we have capital that learns”
   -McKinsey
   The economics of artificial intelligence, McKinsey Quarterly
   X
   GPT = General Purpose Technology
   AI as the Next GPT: a Political-Economy
   Perspective, Trajtenberg 2018
   https://www.nber.org/papers/w24245
   

   View Slide

3. AI Agents & Economics, 2021 Robin Chauhan robin@pathwayi.com
   Employment Displacement
   Osbourne and Frey 2013: “Bottleneck Variables”
   “Frey and Osborne 2016 ... do not consider the implications of
   potential progress in these areas.”
   The Societal Implications of Deep Reinforcement Learning,
   Whittlestone 2021
   Social and
   Affective Machine
   Learning, Jaques
   2019
   OpenAI MuseNet
   Generative models
   2019
   Solving Rubik's Cube
   with a Robot Hand,
   2019 OpenAI
   

   View Slide

4. AI Agents & Economics, 2021 Robin Chauhan robin@pathwayi.com
   Geopolitics
   AI Index 2021 Annual Report, Zhang et al 2021 https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.06312
   

   View Slide

5. AI Agents & Economics, 2021 Robin Chauhan robin@pathwayi.com
   Agency Dilemma
   ● Browser as “agent”
   ○ Agent ownership + control
   ○ facebook.com is not your friend
   ○ Browsers don’t protect our
   interests in the Attention
   economy
   ● Information asymmetry + Moral
   Hazard?
   ○ Agent Providers have more
   information + control
   Economic patterns in a world with artificial
   intelligence, Wagner 2020
   CONSUMER FIRM
   Consumer
   Agent
   Firm Agent
   Agent Provider Agent Provider
   Old market
   New market
   

   View Slide

6. AI Agents & Economics, 2021 Robin Chauhan robin@pathwayi.com
   AI & Economic Actors + Mechanisms
   ACTORS “Nature” Human Corporation /
   Organization
   Government AI Agent / Robot
   Category Living Living Abstract Abstract Abstract
   “Intelligent” “No” Yes Yes ** Debatable Yes
   Rights under
   law
   No Yes Yes Yes No
   (acts on behalf of
   other actors, just
   like any abstract
   actor)
   Can own
   property
   No Yes Yes Yes No
   Scales cheaply No No Somewhat NO Yes
   List of actors partially based on:
   Economic Actors and the Ultimate Goal of the Economy, Zsolnai 2018
   MECHANISMS Voluntary Monetized Notes
   Aggressive No No Subordinate
   Bureaucratic No No Hierarchical
   Market Yes Yes Horizontal
   Ethical Yes No Altruism
   Family,
   Neighborhood
   Janos Kornai (1984, 1990, 1992)
   Risk: Centralized AI Accelerates
   Capitalism, Monetization,
   Reduces Voluntary coordination
   

   View Slide

7. AI Agents & Economics, 2021 Robin Chauhan robin@pathwayi.com
   Solutions Agency dilemma
   ● Regulation
   ● Anti-trust enforcement
   ● Technical Transparency
   ● Open-source agents, Protocols,
   Marketplaces
   Geopolitics
   ● Invest in Canadian AI ecosystem
   Actors + Mechanisms
   ● Promote AI that advances Ethical
   Coordination
   ● Promote rights for Nature
   ● Promote Decentralized AI
   Awareness
   ● Informed citizens -> Political pressure
   ● Informed media -> Meaningful discussion
   ● Informed policy makers -> Sensible policy
   ● Informed economists -> Meaningful guidance
   Labour displacement
   ● Universal Basic Income
   ● Deep educational reforms
   ● Education on demand
   

   View Slide

8. AI Agents & Economics, 2021 Robin Chauhan robin@pathwayi.com
   Thank you!
   Questions?
   Additional Primary Sources
   ● The Economics of AI Conference, National
   Bureau of Economic Research
   ● Machine Learning and the Market for
   Intelligence Conference, Creative Destruction
   Lab, Rotman School of Management,
   University of Toronto
   ● The Societal Implications of Deep
   Reinforcement Learning, Whittlestone 2021
   ● Various sources for basic concepts in
   Economics
   

   View Slide