ABSTRACT
The film Blade Runner 2049 captures the idea of artificial economics—the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) systems work to service the demand for economic growth and capital accumulation, and that they do so courtesy of their status as economic prosumers. In essence, artificial economics yields a vision of AI systems operating as the deliberately engineered components of an economic system, one whose functional goals (e.g. economic growth and capital accumulation) are perhaps no longer adequately served by traditional (i.e., human) forms of production and consumption. There is nothing about the notion of artificial economics that requires us to see artificial prosumption as a technological fix for the “problems” associated with existing economic systems—the idea is, at root, a claim about the mechanistic realisation of economic phenomena. A better way of conceptualizing the philosophical significance of Blade Runner 2049 is to see it as operating in a creative or generative mode—as a source of new ideas and insights.
