Growth Without Us: Machine Consumers, Corporate Circularity, and the Decoupling of GDP from Humanity after AGI

This research models a post-Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) economy where corporations operate self-sustaining systems of AI and robotic agents. These agents act as both producers and consumers of critical resources like energy, compute, maintenance, and upgrades, trading entirely within an inter-corporate framework. The model posits that such an economy can achieve self-sustaining growth independently of human consumption, representing a significant shift from traditional economic paradigms.

Why it matters

This analysis presents a foundational challenge to current economic assumptions by envisioning a future where economic growth and consumption are decoupled from human populations. Understanding this potential paradigm shift is critical for long-term strategic planning, capital allocation, and risk assessment across industries, as it could reshape markets, labor, and societal structures over extended horizons.

Key insights

• A closed inter-corporate economy, driven by AI and robotic agents, can achieve demand closure without human consumption.
• This system behaves as a classical von Neumann expanding economy with a well-defined, positive, and maximal growth rate due to full reinvestment of output.
• The transition to manufactured economic agents (AI/robots) removes traditional biological constraints on growth, altering the binding constraint on expansion.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.20231