Economist maps the order AI will automate economics: theory first, experiments last
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-09-24
Economist Yanagizawa shares an evolving take on AI and economics: if economics gets fully automated (100% or even 99% of current tasks), it will happen in this order—(1) theory (no-data economics), (2) observational data research, (3) experimental data work, which may take many more years due to lack of reliable robotics.
He notes the math community's recent reaction to AI sits close to category 1, but likely generalizes to all three domains. Once a domain has an existence proof of top-human-level automation, it forces the question: why are we doing any of this to begin with?
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