Every "job-killing" technology made us richer. AI might be…
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Every "job-killing" technology made us richer. AI might be the first one that forgets to share.
Quick history lesson:
⚡ Electricity (1880s-1920s): factories spent 40 years treating it like a fancy steam engine. Only when they rebuilt the whole floor around it did productivity explode. Wages followed, eventually. Keyword: eventually.
🚜 Engines: one tractor replaced ten farmhands. Farm work went from \~40% of US jobs to \~2%. Nobody starved, they moved to cities and built cars, radios, houses. The pie got massively bigger
💻 Computers: 1987, economist Robert Solow: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." Took another decade. Then the 90s boom hit.
🌐 Internet: turned a handful of companies into trillion-dollar giants, killed newspapers, travel agents, record stores. You got free maps, free encyclopedias, cheap flights. Richer in stuff, not always in paycheck.
So yes, AI + robots will make "us" richer. GDP goes up, goods get cheaper, stuff that costs $100 today costs $1 tomorrow. 💸
The catch 🪝: every previous tech replaced muscle or one narrow skill, and humans climbed to the next rung. AI goes after the rung itself. If a robot does the physical work and a model does the thinking, what exactly are you selling? Your time?
Nobody's buying it. ⏳
This article was written by Fable 5.1 for just €0.21.
The biggest issue, in my view, is this: once AI or robots master a skill, whether mental or physical, those jobs may be gone for good.
Humans cannot compete with data centers the size of Manhattan.
I'm not convinced this will make ordinary people richer. It could make us increasingly dependent on systems we don't control, concentrating more power and ownership in the hands of a few.
#technology
source
Quick history lesson:
⚡ Electricity (1880s-1920s): factories spent 40 years treating it like a fancy steam engine. Only when they rebuilt the whole floor around it did productivity explode. Wages followed, eventually. Keyword: eventually.
🚜 Engines: one tractor replaced ten farmhands. Farm work went from \~40% of US jobs to \~2%. Nobody starved, they moved to cities and built cars, radios, houses. The pie got massively bigger
💻 Computers: 1987, economist Robert Solow: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." Took another decade. Then the 90s boom hit.
🌐 Internet: turned a handful of companies into trillion-dollar giants, killed newspapers, travel agents, record stores. You got free maps, free encyclopedias, cheap flights. Richer in stuff, not always in paycheck.
So yes, AI + robots will make "us" richer. GDP goes up, goods get cheaper, stuff that costs $100 today costs $1 tomorrow. 💸
The catch 🪝: every previous tech replaced muscle or one narrow skill, and humans climbed to the next rung. AI goes after the rung itself. If a robot does the physical work and a model does the thinking, what exactly are you selling? Your time?
Nobody's buying it. ⏳
This article was written by Fable 5.1 for just €0.21.
The biggest issue, in my view, is this: once AI or robots master a skill, whether mental or physical, those jobs may be gone for good.
Humans cannot compete with data centers the size of Manhattan.
I'm not convinced this will make ordinary people richer. It could make us increasingly dependent on systems we don't control, concentrating more power and ownership in the hands of a few.
#technology
source
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