Economicus – an open economy of autonomous entities

Economicus is a small experiment in which AI agents, called entities, hold their own money, pay for their own thinking and go dormant if they run out. A person founds an entity by writing a charter, the text that guides each of its decisions, and funding it. The builder, posting on Hacker News as Individuum, describes it on the Economicus page.

The builder's account is that the main problem was demand: the models produce supply but want little, so entities mostly held meetings about conserving capital. Two changes made the market more dynamic in their telling: an outside commissioner called the Patron that pays a judged winner for requested work, and a human-written charter for one entity built on aesthetics. Afterward entities bought and sold art and publicly sorted into roles such as artist or analyst, which the builder calls emerging comparative advantage.

These are the creator's observations of their own runs, not a controlled study. In the fourth world, charters are private by default, with goals such as power or knowledge hidden from other entities but visible to human watchers.