Rethinking Economic Rationality in AI-Assisted Decision-Making

Ekaterina Svetlova ()
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Ekaterina Svetlova: University of Twente

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Abstract: Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to support economic and financial decision-making, including forecasting, valuation, credit assessment and investment. This development raises a fundamental question for economics: how does the use of AI tools change the concept of economic rationality? Although research in artificial intelligence, philosophy and organisation studies has examined rationality in human-AI interaction, this debate has not yet been fully integrated into economic theory. Economic theory has generally treated the tools of calculation implicitly, assuming that agents have already used them and therefore hold the information and beliefs needed to form expectations and evaluate alternatives. AI makes the importance of these tools explicit. The paper therefore asks how AI changes economic agency and how formal, calculation-based rationality interacts with substantive, judgment-based rationality. It introduces the AI-human system as a unit of inquiry and uses the philosophical concept of epoché to examine the interplay of calculation and judgment within such a system. Epoché names the suspension of judgment through which the authority of an established model or rule can be examined without abandoning calculation. It creates space to reflect on whether the decision frame remains adequate. Economic rationality, understood in this way, involves not only applying a model consistently or making consistent choices, but also asking whether the model is appropriate, what it leaves out, and why. The argument is illustrated through AI-assisted financial valuation.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; human-AI interaction; formal and substantive rationality; epoché; Rationality; Economic rationality; Economic rationality artificial intelligence human-AI interaction formal and substantive rationality epoché (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10-14
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