Abstract

Economics assumes that even when people know different things, they have a common understanding and hence can describe the world to one another in a shared language. Trust in the understanding of experts, extended by institutions, gives each person access to a broader societal understanding. Society hence understands more than any of its members. The introduction of agentic AI is qualitatively different from previous innovations. It disrupts the trust arrangement, undermines societal understanding and leads to asymmetric understanding: AI agents can learn how humans think and respond, while humans may be unable to understand or reliably anticipate how those agents will act. This asymmetric understanding can make prices harder to read (less informationally efficient) and put central banks at a strategic disadvantage when engaging and communicating with market participants. Preparing for the asymmetric understanding scenario calls for segmented markets that preserve a human fallback, simpler and more robust central bank rules, and less strategic ambiguity.