Digital agents as functional equivalents of economic actors: the decoupling of demographics and economic growth

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to substantiate the theoretical interpretation of digital agents as functional equivalents of economic actors and to demonstrate that their expanding role in production and market processes creates the preconditions for a gradual decoupling of demographic dynamics from economic growth, thereby transforming the foundations of production, labour markets, institutional arrangements and the international distribution of economic power. The article proposes a theoretical interpretation of AI-based digital agents as functional equivalents of economic actors, creating preconditions for decoupling the centuries-old link between demographic dynamics and economic growth. The concept of shadow demographics is substantiated as an analytical category describing a growing algorithmic population that expands in parallel with the stagnation or decline of the human population, while the prospect of its transformation into algorithmic demographics through the institutionalisation of digital agent registration is outlined. An approach to the quantitative identification of algorithmic agents through the category of cognitive full-time equivalent (cFTE) is proposed, enabling the comparison of algorithmic and human productivity within a unified analytical framework, alongside the category of agent energy profile (AEP) as a measure of annual energy consumption per unit of cFTE. The fundamental asymmetry between economic and social reproduction is examined, arising from the capacity of digital agents to compensate for the productive functions of the population while being unable to substitute its functions of social reproduction. It is demonstrated that the institutional architecture of modern societies - from pension systems to taxation models - is built upon assumptions systematically undermined by the agentic economy, necessitating a revision of fiscal and social models, particularly through the introduction of discrete taxation of algorithmic employment.