AI能帮助经济学实现科学化梦想吗?——兼论AI对经济学的影响

Can AI Help Economics Realize Its Dream of Science?-On the Impact of AI on Economics

自19世纪上半叶以来,经济学,特别是西方主流经济学,一直致力于打造成一门像自然科学那样的经济科学,但是时至今日仍然不尽如人意。AI的出现,特别是AGI的问世,似乎又燃起了经济学家们企图借助AI打造经济科学的梦想。科学至少需要满足三个必要条件:一是可测量、可量化;二是可重复;三是可证伪。对照科学的三个必要条件,经济学一条都不符合。虽然AGI技术先进,但它的能力也是有限的,并不能帮助经济学满足科学的三个必要条件,因而它并不能帮助经济学实现科学化梦想。尽管如此,AGI至少可以从八个方面改进经济学:一是整合微观经济学与宏观经济学;二是打破定性分析与定量分析的界限;三是提高经济预测能力;四是提高经济解释能力;五是减少经济博弈中的囚徒困境,实现帕累托改进;六是优化公共产品与私人物品的匹配;七是促进供给与需求之间的动态平衡;八是提高有限理性能力,排除非理性行为。由于受主客观因素的限制,AGI改进经济学的能力是有限的。

Since the first half of the 19th century,economics,especially mainstream economics in the West,has been striving to become an economic science like a natural science,but it is still unsatisfactory to this day.The advent of AI,especially AGI,seems to have reignited the dream of economists trying to build economic science with AI.Science needs to meet at least three necessary conditions:measurable(quantifiable),repeatable,and falsifiable.However,economics meets none of the three requirements of science.Although AGI technology is advanced,its ability is limited,and cannot help economics meet the three necessary conditions of science,so it cannot help economics to realize the dream of science.Nonetheless,AGI can improve economics in at least eight ways:to integrate microeconomics and macroeconomics,to break the boundary between qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis,to improve economic forecasting ability,to improve economic interpretation ability,to reduce the prisoner's dilemma in the economic game and achieve Pareto improvement,to optimize the matching of public goods and private goods,to promote the dynamic balance between supply and demand,and to improve the ability of limited rationality and exclude irrational behavior.However,the ability of AGI to improve economics is limited due to the limitation of objective factors of the recipient.