“Four ways Econ makes people dumber re: future AI” by Steven Byrnes

(Cross-posted from X, intended for a general audience.)

There's a funny thing where economics education paradoxically makes people DUMBER at thinking about future AI. Econ textbooks teach concepts & frames that are great for most things, but counterproductive for thinking about AGI. Here are 4 examples. Longpost:

THE FIRST PIECE of Econ anti-pedagogy is hiding in the words “labor” & “capital”. These words conflate a superficial difference (flesh-and-blood human vs not) with a bundle of unspoken assumptions and intuitions, which will all get broken by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

By “AGI” I mean here “a bundle of chips, algorithms, electricity, and/or teleoperated robots that can autonomously do the kinds of stuff that ambitious human adults can do—founding and running new companies, R&D, learning new skills, using arbitrary teleoperated robots after very little practice, etc.”

Yes I know, this does not exist yet! (Despite hype to the contrary.) Try asking [...]

---

Outline:

(08:50) Tweet 2

(09:19) Tweet 3

(10:16) Tweet 4

(11:15) Tweet 5

(11:31) 1.3.2 Three increasingly-radical perspectives on what AI capability acquisition will look like

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

August 21st, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xJWBofhLQjf3KmRgg/four-ways-econ-makes-people-dumber-re-future-ai

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

---

---

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.