Can AI Plan the Economy?

Many tasks that were once considered difficult for computers to do are now routine. Whether transcribing a credit card number or brewing an espresso, we are served by artificial intelligence every day. While a driverless car giving us a ride across town is the new normal,the sudden emergence of powerful language models that can compose email, write papers, and even pass exams has raised other questions. 

What about using AI to plan the economy? Can AI do that? Is it even possible? Some say yes. The World Economic Forum has published a video on “economic degrowth.” As the economic growth is put into reverse gear, AI, according to the video, could decide which industries should be eliminated first. @RokoMijic, a self-described “AI not kill everyone-ist” suggests that AI could plan an economic system better than the market. A commenter on the same Twitter thread thinks that communism might have succeeded if the Bolsheviks had computers. 

While advanced AI is new, the idea that computers could do economic central planning is not. This was first proposed almost 100 years ago as a part of the “socialist calculation debate.” This was a historical controversy within the economics field over the possibility of a centrally owned and centrally planned economy. 

What AI cannot do is incorporate into a single entity all of the specialized skills that the entrepreneur has; the abilities to calculate, plan, and execute, the personal acceptance of profit or loss, and the continued span of consciousness over time which makes the pursuit of wealth purposeful.