Some Simple Economics of AGI

A unified economic theory of the AGI transition. As the cost to automate falls faster than the cost to verify, a widening Measurability Gap separates what agents can execute from what humans can afford to verify — making verification, not intelligence, the binding constraint on growth. The framework partitions work into four regimes, formalizes measurability-biased technical change, and shows how unverified deployment drifts toward a Hollow Economy of counterfeit utility unless observability, accelerated mastery, and graceful degradation expand society’s verification bandwidth.