The Atomic Human

Artificial General Vehicle

Philosopher’s Stone

The Attention Economy

Herbert Simon on Information

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention …

Simon (1971)

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Human Capital and Economic Measurement

• Central Banks Measure Economic Variables
• Human Capital Index: Skills + Health = Economic Value?
• Goodhart’s Law: Measure → Target → Breakdown
• The Productivity Paradox Returns

Human Capital Index

• World Bank Human Capital Index 2020
• UK outperforms USA and China
• Measures health and education

Productivity Flywheel

Inflation of Human Capital

• Strength in Human Capital double-edged sword.
• Automation creates efficiency.
• But skills risk becoming redundant.

AI Agents and Economic Agency

• From LLMs to Economic Agents
• No Sleep, No Fatigue, No Context
• Markets with Hybrid Intelligence
• What’s the Role of Human Judgment?

Inflation Proof Human Capital

• Does automation totally displace the human?
• Or is there an irreducible core?

Uncertainty Principle

• Machines rely on measurable outputs
  • Quantified aspects of humans easier to automate
  • Essential aspects of humanity are the hardest to measure
• Implies: atomic human is difficult to quantify

Homo Atomicus

• Where we have homo economicus the machine can step in.
• Quantitative vs Qualitative gap
• Homo atomicus is …
  • Not in A-level results
  • Not in hospital waiting lists
  • In the quality of human interaction

New Productivity Paradox

• Current productivity flywheel relies on measurement to translate innovation into productivity.
• Without measurement how does the wheel spin?

The Attention Economy and Financial Markets

• Attention as New Capital Form
• Data as Collateral?
• Platform Economics ≠ Traditional Markets
• Systemic Risk in Attention Monopolies

Supply Chain of Ideas

• Ideas flow from creation to application like physical supply chains
• Parallels with traditional economic supply chain management
• Particularly relevant for IT and AI solutions

Supply Chain of Ideas

• Current imbalance between supply and demand sides
  • Mismatch between macroeconomic interventions and microeconomic need
• Over-Focus on solutionism
  • technologies/companies
• Under-focus on real-world needs … disconnect between government and citizens … disconnect between companies and customers

Supply Chain of Ideas

• Need to map idea problems demand to idea supply
• Need to understand … problems (demand) … current “stock” of solutions (supply)
• Requires active management of idea resources
• Shape supply to meet demand

AI cannot replace atomic human

Attention Reinvestment Cycle

Economic Models and Human Complexity

• Traditional Models: Rational Agents
• AI Systems: Statistical Patterns
• Challenge: Modeling Hybrid Intelligence
• Question: What’s the New Equilibrium?

Implications for Economic Policy

• Opportunities: Forecasting, Risk, Surveillance
• Challenges: New Transmission Mechanisms
• Wage-Setting by Algorithm?
• Credit Allocation by ML?
• Human Judgment Still Essential

The Path Forward

• AI Cannot Replace Atomic Human
• Not Technical Limitation—Fundamental Necessity
• Human Judgment in Uncertainty
• Central Banks’ Role: Framework Design
• Goal: AI Serving Society, Not Metrics

Example: Cambridge Approach

ai@cam

How ai@cam is Addressing Innovation Challenges

• A-Ideas (across 20 departments)
• Policy lab (with Bennett, Minderoo)
• HPC Pioneer projects (with RCS, C2D3)
• Accelerate programme (Schmidt Sciences funded)

Innovation Economy Conclusion

• Interact directly with micro-demand
• Release quality attention
• Reinvest human capital in more innovation