Great piece Matt, this sort of thing is clearly on the way, and these simple economic simulations (games) are exactly why Google DeepMind has been focusing on go, chess, Starcraft etc, games with reasonable degrees of freedom to try things and see which optimise the outcome. The two keys as I see it are (1) the mapping from simulation to world (we probably need simulations more in line with the complexity of those underpinning weather forecasts) and (2) educating people (eg at school) by letting them play with such simulations (as games) to understand how tweaking them can change outcomes and how they outperform intuitive and 'obvious' human variable settings. Ultimately with oversight, so that the settings don't get set to something just obviously crazy, like taxing a certain group at 100% because it enhances the outcome.
Great piece Matt, this sort of thing is clearly on the way, and these simple economic simulations (games) are exactly why Google DeepMind has been focusing on go, chess, Starcraft etc, games with reasonable degrees of freedom to try things and see which optimise the outcome. The two keys as I see it are (1) the mapping from simulation to world (we probably need simulations more in line with the complexity of those underpinning weather forecasts) and (2) educating people (eg at school) by letting them play with such simulations (as games) to understand how tweaking them can change outcomes and how they outperform intuitive and 'obvious' human variable settings. Ultimately with oversight, so that the settings don't get set to something just obviously crazy, like taxing a certain group at 100% because it enhances the outcome.