This paper proposes Discovery Economy as a tentative framework for understanding value creation in the age of AI. Building upon Discovery Continuity, Collective Discovery Capacity, and the Human Continuity Framework, the paper explores the possibility that future societies may increasingly organize around discovery rather than information. As AI reduces the cost of information generation, retrieval, and synthesis, information itself may become increasingly abundant. Under such conditions, the primary societal scarcity may gradually shift from information to discovery. The paper proposes that discovery functions not merely as an individual activity but as a societal process supported by human observation, collective integration, sustainable participation, and AI-enabled discovery infrastructure. The framework further introduces the concepts of Discovery Wealth and Discovery Infrastructure and examines how AI may support discovery not by replacing human observation, but by helping human discoveries find one another. The paper remains exploratory and is intended as an invitation for further observation, discussion, and research regarding the future relationship between discovery, participation, AI, and societal value creation.
N Tanaka (2026) studied this question.