AI-tocracy dynamics

Orlando Gomes ()
Additional contact information
Orlando Gomes: Lisbon Accounting and Business School (ISCAL-IPL) and CEFAGE-ISCAL research center

Economics Bulletin, 2026, vol. 46, issue 2, 604 - 612

Abstract: AI-tocracy is the designation used to characterize a political regime that is autocratic and that resorts to AI-based methods of control and repression to guarantee its entrenchment in power. This study develops an original dynamic model of AI-tocracy, in which political control is pursued via investment in digital surveillance. The sketched model allows for different degrees of authoritarianism and for different levels of efficacy of surveillance. Numerical results indicate that, in the steady state, deeply autocratic regimes can coexist with a fast expansion of the AI frontier, as long as the efficacy of surveillance is high (thus creating prosperous AI-tocracies). If the government is incapable of efficaciously extracting data from socio-economic events and interactions, then deeper authoritarianism will be accompanied by the decline of AI technology and by a fall in output and welfare.

Keywords: AI-tocracy; Big data; Artificial intelligence; Political control; Intertemporal optimization; Steady state equilibrium. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H1 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-30
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2026/Volume46/EB-26-V46-I2-P51.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-26-00121

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().