Modeling the AGI Transition: Verification Bandwidth as the New Binding Constraint on Growth

[Submitted on 24 Feb 2026 (v1), last revised 25 Feb 2026 (this version, v2)]

3d ago· 2 min readenInsight

Summary

This paper models the economic transition to AGI as a collision between exponentially falling automation costs and biologically constrained verification costs. The authors argue that as AI decouples cognition from biology, the binding constraint on growth shifts from intelligence to human verification bandwidth—the capacity to validate and audit abundant machine execution. They identify structural asymmetries (Measurability Gap), labor market disruptions (Missing Junior Loop, Codifier's Curse), and externalities (Trojan Horse externality) that could lead to either a Hollow Economy or an Augmented Economy. The piece offers a practical playbook for stakeholders and argues that scaling verification alongside agentic capabilities is the defining challenge of the AGI era.

Source

bskyModeling the AGI Transition: Verification Bandwidth as the New Binding Constraint on Growtharxiv.org

Key quotes

· 5 pulled

The binding constraint on growth is no longer intelligence but human verification bandwidth: the capacity to validate, audit, and underwrite responsibility when execution is abundant.

The current human-in-the-loop equilibrium is unstable: eroded from below as apprenticeship collapses (Missing Junior Loop) and from within as experts codify their obsolescence (Codifier's Curse).

Unverified deployment becomes privately rational—a Trojan Horse externality.

Today's defining challenge is not the race to deploy the most autonomous systems; it is the race to secure the foundations of their oversight.

Only by scaling our bandwidth for verification alongside our capacity for execution can we ensure that the intelligence we have summoned preserves the humanity that initiated it.

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For millennia, human cognition was the primary engine of progress on Earth. As AI decouples cognition from biology, the marginal cost of measurable execution falls to zero, absorbing any labor capturable by metrics--including creative, analytical, and inn

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