Can AI Refute Economic Theory? Evidence from Beyond the Knowledge Cutoff

Can artificial intelligence (AI) refute economic theory? I document experiments in which I asked several AI models (Gemini, Refine, Claude, and ChatGPT) to check the correctness of four published papers in economic theory, each containing an error that I helped identify or correct. ChatGPT Pro performed best, occasionally constructing counterexamples and corrected proofs, while other models fared worse. However, no model located a true error without substantial human guidance, and data contamination complicates interpretation. I argue that a competent human paired with a frontier model can outperform current peer review, but AI cannot yet refute economic theory on its own.

Source: arXiv:2606.05383v1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05383v1 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.05383v1 Original Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05383v1