The Author

Yilei Shao

Princeton CS PhD. Former Goldman Sachs banker. Founder of Silicon-Based Economics. Devoted to one question: what changes when economic agents are no longer biological.

Yilei Shao
Founding Dean · Shanghai AI-Finance School, ECNU
Princeton CS PhD · Former Goldman Sachs

Yilei Shao holds a PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University. She is the Founding Dean of the Shanghai AI-Finance School at East China Normal University, Director of the Shanghai AI-Finance Industry Research Institute and Incubator, and Director of the United Nations University–ECNU Joint Research Center on AI and Finance. From 2021 to 2023 she served as Secretary-General of the China Office of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), and previously worked at the New York headquarters of Goldman Sachs.

Her research spans artificial intelligence, finance, education, and the arts. A pioneering scholar of Silicon-Based Economics, she works at the frontier of AI applications in finance, explores the creative fusion of AI with education and art, and has long been devoted to the theoretical study of AI ethics and governance.

The School's flagship products include the Smith RM financial reasoning model (deployed at the Shanghai branch of Agricultural Bank of China) and the Global AI Finance Center Index (GAIFC) — the latter a policy-level application of Silicon-Based Economics.

Princeton CS PhD Goldman Sachs Silicon-Based Economics Zero Time Preference Theorem Smith RM GAIFC Index
Career Path
From Wall Street to a new economics
2000s
Princeton University — PhD in Computer Science. Built the foundational framework for thinking about computation and economic systems.
2010s
Goldman Sachs — Banker at the core of the global financial system. First-hand knowledge of market microstructure, risk pricing, and systemic risk.
2020–
East China Normal University — Founded the Shanghai AI-Finance School. Originated Silicon-Based Economics. Proved the Zero Time Preference Theorem. Launched the interdisciplinary research program.
Research Interests
At the intersection of code, capital, and cognition
Σ
Silicon-Based Economics
Post-carbon economic theory — IDP, the power triangle, intelligence-anchored money
δ
Zero Time Preference
The substrate dependence of time preference and its economic, philosophical, and safety consequences
Ω
AI Safety
Architectural safety — provable behavioral bounds under substrate constraints
∫
Financial LLMs
The Smith RM financial reasoning model; formal verification of LLM hallucination
Φ
Philosophy of Mind
Substrate independence, computational sufficiency, artificial consciousness
∞
Global AI Governance
Algorithmic constitutionalism, AI-finance regulation, United Nations collaboration
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about the Silicon-Based Economics program:
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