The application of Reinforcement Learning (RL) to economic modeling reveals a fundamental conflict between the assumptions of equilibrium theory and the emergent behavior of learning agents. While canonical economic models assume atomistic agents act as `takers' of aggregate market conditions, a naive single-agent RL simulation incentivizes the agent to become a `manipulator' of its environment. This paper first demonstrates this discrepancy within a search-and-matching model with concave production, showing that a standard RL agent learns a non-equilibrium, monopsonistic policy. Additionally, we identify a parametric bias arising from the mismatch between economic discounting and RL's treatment of intertemporal costs. To address both issues, we propose a calibrated Mean-Field Reinforcement Learning framework that embeds a representative agent in a fixed macroeconomic field and adjusts the cost function to reflect economic opportunity costs. Our iterative algorithm converges to a self-consistent fixed point where the agent's policy aligns with the competitive equilibrium. This approach provides a tractable and theoretically sound methodology for modeling learning agents in economic systems within the broader domain of computational social science.

--The integration of voice-based AI agents in healthcare presents a transformative opportunity to bridge economic and accessibility gaps in digital health delivery. This paper explores the role of large language model (LLM)-powered voice assistants in enhancing preventive care and continuous patient monitoring, particularly in underserved populations. Drawing insights from the development and pilot study of Agent PULSE (Patient Understanding and Liaison Support Engine)--a collaborative initiative between IBM Research, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Morehouse School of Medicine--we present an economic model demonstrating how AI agents can provide cost-effective healthcare services where human intervention is economically unfeasible. Our pilot study with 33 inflammatory bowel disease patients revealed that 70% expressed acceptance of AI-driven monitoring, with 37% preferring it over traditional modalities. T echnical challenges, including real-time conversational AI processing, integration with healthcare systems, and privacy compliance, are analyzed alongside policy considerations surrounding regulation, bias mitigation, and patient autonomy. Our findings suggest that AI-driven voice agents not only enhance healthcare scalability and efficiency but also improve patient engagement and accessibility. For healthcare executives, our cost-utility analysis demonstrates huge potential savings for routine monitoring tasks, while technologists can leverage our framework to prioritize improvements yielding the highest patient impact. By addressing current limitations and aligning AI development with ethical and regulatory frameworks, voice-based AI agents can serve as a critical entry point for equitable, sustainable digital healthcare solutions. Healthcare systems worldwide face growing challenges in allocating limited medical resources to meet increasing demand [1], [2]. Traditional healthcare delivery models, centered on episodic patient-provider interactions, often result in significant gaps in continuous care, particularly in preventive health monitoring and chronic disease management [2], [3]. These shortcomings disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, including those with limited access to healthcare facilities [4], lower technological literacy [5], or socio-economic constraints [6]. The advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) and multi-modal AI has opened new avenues for digital health applications [7]-[10], notably in voice-based patient engagement [11], [12]. Unlike earlier rule-based conversational agents, modern AI-driven voice assistants can facilitate context-aware, adaptive, and natural conversations that dynamically adjust to user preferences, health literacy levels, and immediate needs [13]. V oice, as humanity's most intuitive mode of communication, reduces engagement barriers and broadens access to healthcare, especially for underserved communities [12], [14].

Rapid Large Language Model (LLM) advancements are fueling autonomous Multi-Agent System (MAS) development. However, current frameworks often lack flexibility, resource awareness, model diversity, and autonomous tool creation. This paper introduces HASHIRU (Hierarchical Agent System for Hybrid Intelligent Resource Utilization), a novel MAS framework enhancing flexibility, resource efficiency, and adaptability. HASHIRU features a "CEO" agent dynamically managing specialized "employee" agents, instantiated based on task needs and resource constraints (cost, memory). Its hybrid intelligence prioritizes smaller, local LLMs (via Ollama) while flexibly using external APIs and larger models when necessary. An economic model with hiring/firing costs promotes team stability and efficient resource allocation. The system also includes autonomous API tool creation and a memory function. Evaluations on tasks like academic paper review (58% success), safety assessments (100% on a JailbreakBench subset), and complex reasoning (outperforming Gemini 2.0 Flash on GSM8K: 96% vs. 61%; JEEBench: 80% vs. 68.3%; SVAMP: 92% vs. 84%) demonstrate HASHIRU's capabilities. Case studies illustrate its self-improvement via autonomous cost model generation, tool integration, and budget management. HASHIRU offers a promising approach for more robust, efficient, and adaptable MAS through dynamic hierarchical control, resource-aware hybrid intelligence, and autonomous functional extension. Source code and benchmarks are available at https://github.com/HASHIRU-AI/HASHIRU and https://github.com/HASHIRU-AI/HASHIRUBench respectively, and a live demo is available at https://hashiruagentx-hashiruai.hf.space upon request.

This paper aims to introduce and analyze the Viz system in a comprehensive way, a novel system architecture that integrates Quantized Low-Rank Adapters (QLoRA) to fine-tune large language models (LLM) within a legally compliant and resource efficient marketplace. Viz represents a significant contribution to the field of artificial intelligence, particularly in addressing the challenges of computational efficiency, legal compliance, and economic sustainability in the utilization and monetization of LLMs. The paper delineates the scholarly discourse and developments that have informed the creation of Viz, focusing primarily on the advancements in LLM models, copyright issues in AI training (NYT case, 2023), and the evolution of model fine-tuning techniques, particularly low-rank adapters and quantized low-rank adapters, to create a sustainable and economically compliant framework for LLM utilization. The economic model it proposes benefits content creators, AI developers, and end-users, delineating a harmonious integration of technology, economy, and law, offering a comprehensive solution to the complex challenges of today's AI landscape.

In economic modeling, there has been an increasing investigation into multi-agent simulators. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art studies establish the model based on reinforcement learning (RL) exclusively for specific agent categories, e.g., households, firms, or the government. It lacks concerns over the resulting adaptation of other pivotal agents, thereby disregarding the complex interactions within a real-world economic system. Furthermore, we pay attention to the vital role of the government policy in distributing tax credits. Instead of uniform distribution considered in state-of-the-art, it requires a well-designed strategy to reduce disparities among households and improve social welfare. To address these limitations, we propose an expansive multi-agent economic model comprising reinforcement learning agents of numerous types. Additionally, our research comprehensively explores the impact of tax credit allocation on household behavior and captures the spectrum of spending patterns that can be observed across diverse households. Further, we propose an innovative government policy to distribute tax credits, strategically leveraging insights from tax credit spending patterns. Simulation results illustrate the efficacy of the proposed government strategy in ameliorating inequalities across households.

Since Google's artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary DeepMind published a paper a few weeks ago describing a generalist agent they call Gato (which can perform various tasks using the same trained model) and claimed that artificial general intelligence (AGI) can be achieved just via sheer scaling, a heated debate has ensued within the AI community. While it may seem somewhat academic, the reality is that if AGI is just around the corner, our society--including our laws, regulations, and economic models--is not ready for it. Indeed, thanks to the same trained model, generalist agent Gato is capable of playing Atari, captioning images, chatting, or stacking blocks with a real robot arm. It can also decide, based on its context, whether to output text, join torques, button presses, or other tokens. As such, it does seem a much more versatile AI model than the popular GPT-3, DALL-E 2, PaLM, or Flamingo, which are becoming extremely good at very narrow specific tasks, such as natural language writing, language understanding, or creating images from descriptions.

Various conceptual and descriptive models of conversational search have been proposed in the literature -- while useful, they do not provide insights into how interaction between the agent and user would change in response to the costs and benefits of the different interactions. In this paper, we develop two economic models of conversational search based on patterns previously observed during conversational search sessions, which we refer to as: Feedback First where the agent asks clarifying questions then presents results, and Feedback After where the agent presents results, and then asks follow up questions. Our models show that the amount of feedback given/requested depends on its efficiency at improving the initial or subsequent query and the relative cost of providing said feedback. This theoretical framework for conversational search provides a number of insights that can be used to guide and inform the development of conversational search agents. However, empirical work is needed to estimate the parameters in order to make predictions specific to a given conversational search setting.

Digitalization is not merely an evolutionary transformation, it will bring disruption to the very heart of established business models, changing the way goods are produced and how the value of services is perceived. New technology and information driven economic model will emerge, bringing as deep a change as did the advent of electrical power in the 19th century. Since the advent of the foundational technology driving forces of Social Media, Mobile Communications, Analytics and Cloud, it has taken less than 10 years for digitalization to become a worldwide, cross-generation, collaborative, contextual and data intensive phenomenon – And there is no sign of any slow-down in its reach or impact. We refer to this current wave of disruptive transformation as "The Third Digital Revolution" – Ascent Journey 2018: the 3rd digital revolution: Agility and Fragility- Report from Atos Scientific Community. January 2015 – although there are parallel revolutions both in the way that we represent / use information and in the computing technology that we use to process it.

In 1979, an innovative two-minute TV commercial gave Britain a glimpse of the future. Choreographed to music from Rossini's Barber of Seville, hi-tech machines built the Fiat Strada. The tagline was "Handbuilt by Robots." Humans were nowhere to be seen in the Turin factory where the ad was shot, but the film crew knew where the people were: outside, on picket lines protesting the loss of their jobs. Fast forward nearly 40 years and "the robots are coming, they want to replace us, and there's nothing we can do to stop them" isn't the plot of the next season of Westworld, it's a real-world warning that's becoming louder with each new leap in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Both the technoprogressive enthusiasts and the head-in-the-sand reactionaries believe doomsayers are overstating the threat.

Is bias in AI self-reinforcing? Decision-making systems that impact criminal justice, financial institutions, human resources, and many other areas often have bias. This is especially true of algorithmic systems that learn from historical data, which tends to reflect existing societal biases. In many high-stakes applications, like hiring and lending, these decision-making systems may even reshape the underlying populations. When the system is retrained on future data, it may become not less but more detrimental to historically disadvantaged groups.