MIT paper: in the AGI era, the scarce resource is human verification bandwidth
akbirthko · x · 2026-10-23
In "Some Simple Economics of AGI," Christian Catalini (MIT), Xiang Hui (WashU) and Jane Wu (UCLA) argue that once execution cost approaches zero and autonomous agents act with broad agency, the binding constraint on growth is no longer intelligence but human verification bandwidth — the scarce capacity to validate outcomes, audit behavior, and underwrite meaning and responsibility. They model the AGI transition as a collision of two cost curves, criticizing standard models that treat AI as labor substitution or complement, and warn that any labor captured by metrics — including creative, analytical, and innovative work — will be absorbed.
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