
The Economics of AGI: Why Verification Is the New Scarcity w/ Christian Catalini
Published: March 26, 2026
Duration: 1:25:53
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...