Research Platform
Research Library
The Research Library is a growing collection of interrelated inquiries driven by intellectual curiosity, exploring the technological, economic, financial, environmental, and institutional forces shaping our world.
Each inquiry begins with curiosity: Why is this happening? What is connected to it? What might change because of it? Who bears the consequences?
Through research and the lenses of Governance, Stewardship, Sovereignty, and Planning, The Judgment Economy follows those connections wherever they lead.
The objective is not simply to accumulate knowledge, but to develop the judgment required to understand what that knowledge means.
INQUIRIES UNDER EXPLORATION
The Pillars of the Judgment Economy are expressed through a growing collection of inquiries into the technological, economic, environmental, and institutional forces shaping our world. Each inquiry begins with a real-world observation and is examined through research, evidence, and the lenses of Governance, Stewardship, Sovereignty, and Planning.
Learn HOW to think about change, not merely WHAT to think about change.
Many of society's most consequential challenges emerge when capability advances faster than preparedness. The inquiries below explore that gap through Governance, Stewardship, Sovereignty, and Planning.
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Why did a plumbing company become an AI winner?
The AI Ecosystem
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Why are private companies investing trillions where governments once led?
The Innovation Reversal
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Why does flooding continue to disrupt major cities?
Climate, AI & The Stewardship Test
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Are you familiar with DARPA and its role in the technologies we use today?
The Architects of Innovation
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Can a society govern what it does not understand?
AI Infrastructure and the Public Trust Gap
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Are rare earths the new oil?
Rare Earths Become a Strategic Asset
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What happens when a €1 billion-a-day trade deficit becomes unsustainable?
China, AI, and the Rebalancing Question
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The Great Reallocation
How AI Is Reshaping Industries, Work, and Economic Value
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The Judgment Gap
When Capability Outruns Governance
FEATURED EXTERNAL RESEARCH
Selected external reports and research briefs that inform the broader archive of inquiry.
AI 2027
- Project
- AI Futures Project
- Authors
- Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean
- Original publication date
- April 3, 2025
A detailed forecasting scenario exploring how rapid advances in AI agents, automated AI research, computing infrastructure, and geopolitical competition could lead toward artificial general intelligence and potentially superintelligence. It outlines two diverging paths: continued acceleration, or deliberate slowdown anchored in oversight, transparency, alignment, and international coordination.
Classification: External forecasting scenario. Inclusion does not constitute endorsement of its timeline, assumptions, or conclusions.
Why it matters: The report is not presented as certainty or policy recommendation, but as a concrete forecasting exercise that exposes decisions governments, technology companies, and societies could confront if capability growth outpaces institutional understanding and control.
Connection to the Pillars
- Governance: asks who oversees increasingly capable AI systems and the institutions developing them.
- Stewardship: asks what safeguards are required when competitive pressure rewards speed over caution.
- Sovereignty: asks how United States–China competition could shape AI development and international security.
- Planning: asks whether institutions can prepare before critical decisions become irreversible.
Key Inquiry
How do we prepare for a future whose timing is uncertain but whose consequences could be profound?
Read the report →
External report brief
Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead
Leopold Aschenbrenner (June 2024)
The report argues that rapid AI scaling may reshape technical, economic, geopolitical, and national-security planning more quickly than many institutions currently anticipate.
Key themes include:
- Continued gains from compute scaling, algorithmic efficiency, and capability unhobbling.
- The transition from chatbots toward agent-based systems acting more like digital coworkers.
- The possibility that automating AI research could accelerate future AI development.
- The growing role of infrastructure, energy, security, and national strategy in the AI race.
- The challenge of governing increasingly capable systems while maintaining alignment, oversight, and public accountability.
The report assumes that capability growth may accelerate faster than many institutions are prepared for.
Why It Matters
The report examines a central question facing governments, institutions, and businesses:
Can preparedness keep pace with capability?
The report’s value lies not in the precision of its forecasts, but in the questions it raises about governance, stewardship, sovereignty, planning, and the long-term implications of increasingly capable AI systems.
Key Inquiry
🧭 If AI capability accelerates, will institutional preparedness accelerate with it?
EXTERNAL RESEARCH
Recursive Self-Improvement: What Happens When AI Helps Build Better AI?
Research spotlight based on “What if automating AI R&D triggers an intelligence explosion?”
AI is increasingly participating in AI research itself. Could better AI systems help develop still-better systems, creating a recursive cycle that accelerates technological progress? This research examines the evidence, constraints, governance challenges, and consequences of a potential intelligence explosion.
Why It Matters
This paper deserves attention because it describes a recursive mechanism in which increasingly capable AI systems expand the effective AI R&D workforce, helping produce still-better systems and potentially accelerating the cycle.
Key Inquiry
If AI begins materially accelerating the process of improving AI itself, can institutions build oversight and preparedness quickly enough?
Editorial Continuation
This spotlight leads directly to our on-page judgment question and four-pillar interpretation of what recursive acceleration means in practice.
Continue to the judgment question →
UNIVERSITY RENEWAL
Five Commitments to Renew the American University
Cornell University's Committee on the Future of the American University (2025)
Vision statement outlining Cornell's response to disruption in higher education, proposing five commitments to renew the university's purpose, strengthen public trust, support research resilience, and foster integrated, human-centered learning.
Why It Matters
The statement frames higher-education renewal around judgment, deliberation, public impact, resilient research, community, and stronger institutional coordination in an era shaped by AI and declining public trust.
Key Inquiry
🧭 If AI makes knowledge increasingly accessible, does higher education's enduring value increasingly lie in cultivating the judgment required to use it wisely?
FUTURE OF HIGHER ED
Report of the Committee on the Future of the American University
Cornell University · September 22, 2026
Cornell's committee examines disruptive pressures on higher education — including AI, federal funding strain, and declining trust — and proposes a human-centered vision for renewal across teaching, research, public engagement, graduate education, governance, and deliberation.
Why It Matters
The full report shows how sound judgment becomes a central capacity universities must deliberately cultivate as information grows abundant and institutional pressures intensify.
Key Inquiry
🧭 If information becomes abundant, are universities creating the conditions necessary to develop sound judgment?
