Philosophy and Technology 39 (3). 2026Artificial intelligence (AI) has renewed interest in the possibility of central economic planning. Scholars and technology leaders argue that sufficiently advanced AI systems could replace decentralized market processes by optimizing production and allocation decisions. This paper contends that such proposals overlook a significant epistemic function performed by markets. I first distinguish five epistemic functions of markets: economic calculation, knowledge aggregation, error detection, decentralized experimentation, and entrepreneurial discovery. I then focus on entrepreneurial discovery as analyzed by Israel Kirzner. Markets coordinate economic activity not only by processing existing information but also by generating new knowledge through entrepreneurial alertness to previously unnoticed opportunities. Drawing on research in embodied cognition and phenomenology, I contend that this discovery process relies crucially on embodied tacit knowledge. Entrepreneurs recognize opportunities through practical sensorimotor and affective engagement with tools, physical environments, and social practices. Contemporary AI systems, such as large language models and AI agents, operate through disembodied computational processes and lack sensory and affective coupling through which such knowledge arises. Because entrepreneurial discovery requires embodiment, AI systems cannot replicate this epistemic function of markets. The paper concludes by considering whether future developments in embodied AI could approximate entrepreneurial discovery and what this possibility implies for AI-assisted economic planning. ( direct link )