DVEC 2040: The Data Value Exchange Economy
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Background: Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), including accelerating AI capability, large-scale deployment, and increasing automation, are transforming the mechanisms through which economic value is created, measured, and exchanged. These developments may reduce the marginal cost of selected knowledge-intensive activities while increasing the economic importance of high-quality, reliable, and actionable data. Objectives:This study aims to develop the Data Value Exchange Economy 2040 (DVEC 2040) as a conceptual framework for examining how AI-driven economic transformation may influence conventional monetary valuation and contribute to the emergence of data-based mechanisms of economic value. Methods:The study develops a conceptual framework through interdisciplinary synthesis of AI-driven productivity, digital economics, information value, monetary systems, and emerging post-scarcity perspectives. The framework introduces Data Value Units (DVUs) as a complementary mechanism for representing validated informational value and proposes a conceptual Data Value function incorporating Information Quality, Knowledge Quotient, Ethical Quotient, and informational entropy. It further considers human–AI collaboration as a mechanism for progressive functional optimisation, while recognising that absolute and permanently sustained perfection cannot be achieved under conditions of uncertainty, incomplete information, dynamic environments, and residual informational entropy. Results:DVEC 2040 proposes a transitional monetary–data economic architecture rather than the immediate replacement of money. The framework identifies three broad stages between 2025 and 2040: AI-assisted economic transformation, deeper AI integration across production and services, and the emergence of a monetary–data hybrid economy. Accelerating AI capability may generate substantial productivity gains and deflationary pressure in selected markets, while the value of verified information, knowledge, and AI-generated outputs may increase. Human–AI collaboration may enhance decision quality and economic value creation, although residual uncertainty and informational entropy remain persistent constraints. Conclusions:DVEC 2040 provides a conceptual basis for examining the possible evolution of economic value in an increasingly AI-intensive economy. Rather than predicting the disappearance of monetary systems, the framework proposes their potential coexistence with data-based value mechanisms. The study positions human–AI complementary intelligence, rather than either human or artificial intelligence alone, as a potential pathway toward higher levels of functional economic optimisation, while recognising that absolute perfection cannot be sustainably maintained. The framework provides a foundation for future empirical research examining whether AI capability growth, productivity changes, information quality, and data-market development are associated with measurable shifts in the structure of economic value.
Authors: Sharma, Dr Neeraj, Dr virendra singh
Institution: Sri Dev Suman Uttarakhand University
Language: English
Topic: Technology's Impact on Media
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204178027