The Economics of AGI: Why Verification Is the New Scarcity w/ Christian Catalini

MIT economist Christian Catalini joins Ryan and David to unpack his new paper, "Some Simple Economics of AGI," which argues that the scarce resource in the AI economy is no longer intelligence but verification: the human capacity to check, judge, and certify that AI output is correct. Christian walks through the two cost curves reshaping every industry (cost to automate vs. cost to verify), explains why entry-level jobs are collapsing first through what he calls the "missing junior loop," why even top experts are unknowingly training their replacements (the "codifier's curse"), and maps out the three roles that survive the transition: Directors, Meaning Makers, and Liability Underwriters.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro
3:42 The Low-Grade Panic
6:43 Who Gets Hit First, and Hardest?
13:06 Coding as Canary, or Exception?
16:21 Human Cognition Was the Binding Constraint
19:59 What Is Verification, Exactly?
29:10 The Codifier's Curse
31:21 The Expanding Iceberg: Non-Measurable Work
38:32 The Two Racing Cost Curves
41:59 Trojan Horse Externality
48:46 The Four Quadrants: Where Do You Want to Be?
54:12 Liability Underwriters and the Venture Capital Parallel
55:41 Directors: Navigating Unknown Unknowns
59:49 60-80% of Your Job Can Be Displaced
1:06:24 Button Pushers vs. Founders: The Great Resorting
1:12:08 The Luddite Risk: Political Backlash Against AI
1:17:30 What Companies and Investors Should Do
1:22:56 The Crypto Connection
1:25:11 Don't Panic: A Closing Playbook

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RESOURCES

Christian Catalini
https://x.com/ccatalini

Some Simple Economics of AGI
https://arxiv.org/html/2602.20946v2

Christian’s thread on his paper
https://x.com/ccatalini/status/2026311784421036223

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