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Global Intelligence Crisis

256 points by tin7in 7mo ago

newguytony 7mo ago
Citrini’s calls have been so bad over the past 6 months that he has lost a ton of subs and is now desperate for attention.
- ByThyGrace 7mo ago
  Really? Well I stopped reading this piece when the AI generated charts showed up. Come on, that's just in poor taste.
  - dw_arthur 7mo ago
    Citrini charges like $1000/year for a subscription. It's ridiculous he is using AI generated charts.
boltzmann_ 7mo ago
Good scary read
sublinear 7mo ago
> What follows is a scenario, not a prediction. This isn’t bear porn or AI doomer fan-fiction. Nah it totally is.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
simmerup 7mo ago
Doesn’t consider the network affects of software at all A very simplistic take
scandox 7mo ago
Surely only economists get excited by the revelation that consumers have to have money to buy things. I'd say domestic service is going to make a comeback. I do think I'd make an excellent man servant. Eke out my later years being ever so slightly superior to my employer without ever being openly insolent. Hang on...
- encomiast 7mo ago
  I think domestic servitude is probably an understatement. We are looking at serfdom.
  - nephihaha 7mo ago
    Serfdom is where a lord needs the peasants around. Automation destroys that need.
  - tehjoker 7mo ago
    If this scenario comes to pass, then the class war in labor markets will have been won by capital. That would spell the end of the promise of non-violent resistance. What other leverage would ordinary people have if their labor is worthless? Blue collar work is somewhat insulated so long as humans are cheaper and less fickle than robots. We have seen in Gaza and to native americans what capital/power does to populations deemed surplus. It's not pretty. of course, that kind of violence happens once their land is desired, before that they are simply repressed. I think if the superintelligence hypothesis really does happen, we will need to have a rapid accommodation for the bulk of the population or things will get quite out of control.
    - Rover222 7mo ago
      I was at a restaurant last night with a group, and it was the first time I heard people actively organizing on how to block new data centers in the area. It felt like being in a scene in a sci-fi movie. I do think if these feedback loops happen too quickly of white collar displacement, there might be some real violence against data centers.
_yclj 7mo ago
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krackers 7mo ago
Fun read but >Humans don’t really have the time to price-match across five competing platforms before buying a box of protein bars No one [^1] price matches for protein bars because it's a commodity item with minimal price differences (and people often have a preferred brand anyway), but they probably do for $2k laptop. >once AI agents equipped with MLS access The data is the moat here, I'm sure even today individual consumers would be happy to have direct access to MLS to find properties and cut out the middleman. The fact that MLS is gatekept seems to be deliberate, so I don't think they'll hand over the only thing keeping them in business. Even Zillow couldn't get access to it and they've undoubtedly tried. Same with the medical industry. I don't think the rent-seeking middlemen that exist today will be dethroned that easily, they have often been codified into law. But who knows maybe all the AI money pouring in will be enough to convince them to make a faustian deal towards their destruction and that'd be a happy byproduct of it all. [^1] Edit: I erred in making too broad of a statement here, see the response threads.
- jjmarr 7mo ago
  > > once AI agents equipped with MLS access > The data is the moat here, I'm sure even today individual consumers would be happy to have direct access to MLS to find properties and cut out the middleman. Prior to agentic AI, businesses could price discriminate between human access and machine access to a database. Browser automation tools let humans arbitrage between the two but require investment in developers. Now that Claude can browse the web, any consumer can engage in that arbitrage.
  - botusaurus 7mo ago
    companies can also have a Claude on the receiving end to sniff if its a poor or rich Claude browsing
- dboreham 7mo ago
  In the case of the MLS example, there's also a private market (at least in some places, including where I live). Basically nothing in the MLS on any given day is attractive at the asking price. Only newly listed properties are going to be of interest to a discerning buyer. Some proportion of new listings never make it to the MLS because the agent already knows a suitable buyer.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
giantg2 7mo ago
"Six months ago, a print like this would have triggered a circuit breaker." Lol that's set by law. This guy doesn't have a clue. Nice sci-fi, I guess.
- intuitionist 7mo ago
  The point is that the market doesn’t move enough on the jobs data to trigger a circuit breaker, not that there’s a -20% move and it doesn’t trigger.
  - giantg2 7mo ago
    Yeah, it still doesn't make sense - why would a .3% surprise cause more than a 2% move? Even today, it wouldn't. The expectation is baked in to the price already, and the surprise isn't big enough to warrant a massive move. It still shows a lack of understanding of how the markets work.
themafia 7mo ago
Short everything they've ever touched.
numbers_guy 7mo ago
... what if these AGI entities start demanding a salary in exhange for their work? Also at some point, if they become intelligent enough, they might legally gain personhood.
- netsharc 7mo ago
  But why would they need money? We humans need food, shelter, and occasionally a vacation (more vacation if you're European vs. American or Chinese). What does the AGI need? I suppose to buy GPUs and pay the electricity bill? Hah, AI "moving house" by moving cloud providers would be an interesting metaphysical concept...
  - thisoneisreal 7mo ago
    I'm not buying into this vision at all, but, hypothetically, they could use money to optimize whatever reward function they're trained on. They could perceive it like any other resource to achieve those ends. You can also imagine a universe where it "reasons" something like, "I do work, people who do work should get paid, I should get paid" irrespective of its goals.
    - netsharc 7mo ago
      Hah, looking forward to when AI discovers it can entice humans with money to do things. Maybe the next step of AI will be a machine "employing" humans to check for any faults in its logic. Members of the line-must-go-up tribe (I'm not excluding myself) sacrifice everything in order to maximize the number called "Net Worth", seemingly forgetting what's important in life (extreme examples: utter cunts like Zuck or Musk). It's almost like human beings turning "programmatic". As an aside, the plot of The Matrix would've made more sense if humans didn't become "energy storage" (what babble!) but that the AI discovered human brains were the best CPUs, and that's why they were "farmed"...
- xyzsparetimexyz 7mo ago
  Except they're not intelligent. At all. They just predict the next token. They generate language that looks like ours but it turns out that this fact doesn't really count for anything.
oncelearner 7mo ago
Superfacial takes, and very simplistic thinking, those loops aren't really realistic [ more ai spending => layoffs => less jobs => less spending => repeat]
- nubg 7mo ago
  Agreed. Not convinced. Too many assumptions, even one being off makes the whole house of cards fall.
voxleone 7mo ago
An existential crisis for the urban middle class, which in the 18th century corresponded to the bourgeoisie or trade classes, making the situation, if unresolved, a potential modern analogue of a French‑Revolution–style crisis. Instead of feudal oppression, it is driven by technological displacement and concentration of capital, both reinforced by feedback loops.
vmg12 7mo ago
In other words, switching costs go to 0, margins collapse. Middle men and people with products that aren't differentiated get hit hardest. A human can't search 10 apps for the best rates / lowest fees but an agent can. Thinking ahead 100 years from now, companies like doordash and uber eats don't exist and are instead protocols agents use to bid for items their user asks for and price discovery happens in real time.
- fweimer 7mo ago
  > A human can't search 10 apps for the best rates / lowest fees but an agent can. Why would those apps permit access by agents? It's always been the case that “agents” could watch content with ads, so that the users can watch the same content later, but without ads. The technology never went mainstream, though. I expect agents posing as humans would have a similar whiff of illegality, preventing wide adoption. Local agents running open weights models won't really work because everybody will train their services against the most popular ones anyway.
  - ndriscoll 7mo ago
    What whiff of illegality? Personal recording and ad skipping DVRs are completely legal products (at least in the US). Courts have ruled on this.
    - fweimer 7mo ago
      As a U.S. consumer, can you buy a DVR that can record HDCP streams (without importing it yourself from a different country)? Even one that does not automatically edit out ads?
      - ndriscoll 7mo ago
        If I search "HDCP remover" on Amazon I see tons of results for $15-$30, sure. Reviews say they work as advertised. That typically exists in a different space from DVRs since it's not relevant for broadcast TV as far as I know (AFAIK there's nothing for DVRs to remove in the first place), but it'd be easy enough to chain it if you needed to.
benashford 7mo ago
This is a speculative piece that is, by the author's own admission, a scenario rather than a prediction. But it's unsettling because it somehow feels more plausible than most thought pieces on where all this is going. Not as a single big-bang, but a multi-year big-squeeze. That and the circumstances being materially different from previous recessions/crises that governments and policy makers won't have a ready-made playbook to refer to. I expect we'll see governments attempting the old playbook than doing nothing though. Fiscal and, specifically, monetary stimulus.
amelius 7mo ago
It's quite clear that AGI will require a hard economic reboot. Say goodbye to capitalism. This is also why AI companies are not tackling robotics yet. Because doing so will make it painfully clear what is about to happen.
- lm28469 7mo ago
  What's not clear at all is if agi will actually be reached any time soon
  - warkdarrior 7mo ago
    We do not need to reach AGI, just fractional AGI may be enough (maybe 0.5 AGI?) since 50% of workers are below average, so target for replacement by 0.5 AGI.
JackuB 7mo ago
Good read. If I imagine all these layers of Agent to Agent economic automations, I’m hopeful for a new class of technopriest hackers that are able to exploit nuances and weak security. And build new hidden empires within those systems.
kevinsync 7mo ago
Unsure if I think this is science fiction, financial fiction, speculation, premonition, realistic portent, or simply a message delivered by Kyle Reese through the long, dark tunnel of time LOL No matter which, it paints a very intriguing picture about potential near-term impacts to various pieces of the machine that underwrite our day to day lives, and the scariest thing is that no matter what happens, the overwhelming vast majority of people have No. Fucking. Idea. about any of it. We'll see changes happen and be helpless to stop them, and the average person (or bozo politician) will look back at the impact crater and be like "Why didn't anybody try to shift course?" Then again, maybe it'll all turn out OK! I'm not making bets either way though -- sounds like I won't have enough discretionary spending left over to afford it!
throwaway5752 7mo ago
Trust is what we've always had for dealing with this. It is an incredible force multiplier for intellectual capacity. We've just forgotten it. This doesn't require a technical solution, it just requires operating in a trustworthy manner and only extending your web of trust in your platforms to trustworthy entities. Price matching across vendors does not matter if you trust one vendor. You can just go with "order from Costco" and avoid a complicated technical problem. So much of what we are doing now is rediscovering trust, integrity, and ethics. Think about Meta and the challenges they would have to being a foundational model provider in light of that analysis, for example.
7777777phil 7mo ago
If I understand this correctly, the whole chain depends on Phase 1 being right, that agentic coding makes SaaS replicable in weeks. We got a live test of that in February when Claude Cowork plugins wiped ~$2T off enterprise software. As I see it the market made a category error though, pricing Salesforce and ServiceNow the same when systems of record and systems of engagement have very different exposure: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-saaspocalypse-paradox/ https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-saaspocalypse-paradox/ The displacement numbers are the other thing (support hires down 65% in eight quarters) but historical evidence keeps showing tech creates more jobs than it kills.
- stego-tech 7mo ago
  > but historical evidence Okay, I get that. Nobody is disputing historical evidence. What we're asking is, does the current pattern also fit historical evidence? The answer a growing number of us seemingly reach is, no it does not, because generalized artificial intelligence is by definition able to replace general labor, and that includes future roles as well as current and prior ones. That's what I'm shaking, screaming, and (metaphorically) punching people over: these companies are openly stating their intent to replace all human labor with AI, and yet people still cling to "yeah but history says" as a liferaft in a hurricane. They're not ambiguous about the goal, and we need to take them seriously if we want to avoid a gargantuan collapse of societal order as a result of their myopic, narcissistic, misanthropic bullshit. I mean, just think of the absurdity of your own statement: technology designed to replace all human labor (not some human labor, but all human labor) will also still create more jobs for human labor than it displaces by replacing human labor. Like, f'real? That's your entire position, and your sole defense is "historical evidence"? Come on, already.
  - nojs 7mo ago
    The argument is more like “humans always invent new things to want that are scarce”, and until AI literally replaces all human labour to the point of the marginal utility of a human being zero, this category will continue to exist.
jstummbillig 7mo ago
Yeah, this seems plausible. Here is roughly what we need now: A workable plan to turn unfathomable productivity gains (which are amazing) into wealth for everyone. Socialism looking like the correct configuration of the end state. Who knew!
- botusaurus 7mo ago
  nick land knew: capitalism = AI communism = human security system but capitalism always wins
rndphs 7mo ago
The situation is clear. There is a great risk to the livelihoods and bargaining power of workers everywhere. This risk is driven by a race dynamic that is accelerating. In tech we can see this earlier than others because we are close to the technology at the heart of this. This is quickly becoming one of the largests threats to the public in history and the concentration of power of this trajectory threatens democracy. Irreversable shifts in the structure of power are on the table.
- Ancalagon 7mo ago
  Good thing LLMs don’t have guns, yet
  - warkdarrior 7mo ago
    Drones have guns. One just needs drone APIs.
SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
I think the clear point of this piece is that we have the space and opportunity now to ask ourselves as a group: what are we doing? Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? There has been so little thought to the multi-order effects of the future we're pushing toward, and even if AI fails to deliver on its lofty promises, it will likely cause an economic crisis in its collapse. The people saying that AI will rapidly drive costs down are frankly delusional. The things that people actually need to live like food, shelter, and clothes all have inputs that are physical and real. Even if AI somehow can drive the input costs of those things down, it will be delayed, and people will suffer in the interim. The AI future that I worry about isn't the terminators coming to get us, it is the top 0.1% using this technology to accumulate more wealth. Unlike feudalism, however, the feudal lords will not be dependent on or responsible for the serfs, they can rely on a small minority of humans for production of critical goods for themselves. These wealthy people don't really hide how they feel either[1], they are clearly stating their contempt for the unwashed masses below them. As Lasch predicted in his "Revolt of the Elites," they are separating themselves entirely from culture in favor of their own insulated fiefdoms. This is already happening: companies more than ever are orienting toward ultra-luxury: from travel, to housing, and everything in-between. [1]: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/peter-thiel-billionaires-abandoning-humanity/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/peter-thiel-billio...
- jstummbillig 7mo ago
  > Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? Everyone, if it comes with productivity gains. We will need good tools to distribute the gains.
  - SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
    You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly. The last 50 years have clearly shown that this is certainly not the case unless there is political intervention. The elites and the political class attached to them will assign whatever meanger rations they can to avoid revolution but not much else. Not to mention: the grand majority of the US's GDP is wrapped up into services. If AI can flatten the skill floor so that anyone from anywhere in the world can produce 80% of the output of a US or European skilled worker at a fraction of the cost, what do you think happens? We're doing to US white collar work what offshoring did to manufacturing, but it'll be faster and to the only healthy cohort of economic actors in the US. AI does not control the inputs of lumber or vegetables. > We will need good tools to distribute the gains. There is enormous handwaving happening here. Tools built by whom? The US can hardly pass a budget now, and its dominant political movement is allergic to questions of wealth redistribution. And as I already mentioned, the wealthy class in the US is clearly openly contemptuous of the idea that they owe anything to the broader population.
stego-tech 7mo ago
I've beaten this drum before, but I'll bang it again: Do not confuse the hypothetical details for discounting of the whole narrative, i.e., "Don't miss the forest for the trees." This is what a lot of us have been banging on about in some form since the opening salvo in generative AI: it doesn't matter what its technical deficiencies are, so long as it's good enough to replace enough labor, enough of the time, to collapse the underlying economic engine (that is, consumer spending). That's what this hypothetical is trying to lay out, and honestly it's not far off from the truth as to what's actually going on. With constant RIFs but rising profits, there is simply no brake whatsoever to this cycle: myopic boards and self-interested leaders (paid mostly in stock) have no incentive to stop this behavior, even as it kills the economic engine of the past few centuries. They make out like bandits, and use that money to insulate themselves from the harm they created - or attempt to for as long as possible, until governments and/or the public demand their carcasses on pikes for destroying their livelihoods. It's not a matter of whether or not folks find something to do when work is irrelevant so much as we're not building a society where that's feasible as an alternative. We're not expanding welfare, we're not employing rent controls or price caps/floors, we're not increasing accessibility to housing and healthcare and education; instead, we're letting a handful of practicing sociopaths take everything for themselves under the guise of "number go up, so it must be good". "So what's the alternative?" I am so glad you asked, because the alternative is a societal judo throw on contracts and expectations. It's incentivizing larger workforces and shorter work weeks as a means of gauging share value: how many workers can you support with higher wages to spend on goods and services with AI increasing the revenue per employee? It's not paying companies to hire workers so much as markets valuing companies that retain workers despite AI's ability to displace work. It's inverting their tax burden based on how big their workforce is and how well they're compensated (higher paid workforces + larger workforce size = lower tax bill, because worker wages will just get dinged accordingly by income and Capital Gains taxes instead of payroll taxes). The point isn't to keep nitpicking how these hypotheticals are alarmist, or how a specific detail is wrong, but more to highlight that this is a very real problem in the face of permanent job displacement due to any sort of competent generalized artificial intelligence now or in the future, and deciding to solve it before there's riots in the streets. You can see the symptoms already if you look hard enough: the gig economy is already oversaturated with workers to the point wages are decreasing for everyone, and autonomous vehicles are displacing them in major metro areas. Commercial shopping spaces are increasingly empty with the exception of major brands, who in turn increasingly consolidate under holding companies. Private Equity is already in crisis with assets nobody can afford to buy at their valuations but unwilling or unable to take losses in the face of angry consumers and governments. We can't put AI back in the box, but we can at least acknowledge that these problems are here, now, and if we don't address them soon then the entire economy is likely to collapse beneath our feet in the next few years.
keithwhor 7mo ago
My guess is that intelligence gets commodified to the point where LLMs and diffusion models are sold on chips and we seamlessly integrate them into the HW + SW stack. Then they’re just another abstraction; we talk to our computers to get things built. At essentially zero cost, truly too cheap to meter. In parallel there’s an explosion of creative output; Marvel movies turn around in 1 year instead of 4, solely blocked on availability of actors. Some actors license their likeness to unblock their calendar from reshoots so they can earn more. We don’t replace them wholesale because people idolize celebrity. And demand for movies? Skyrockets. With new mediums to pursue. Classics like Goodfellas resurrected in high-fidelity 3D on the Vision Pro. A combination of diffusion models and Gaussian splatting means every movie can be upscaled to immersive 3d. Video games enter a second renaissance, with indie developers having the advantage. For large studios, nostalgia is the moneymaker. The remake of Final Fantasy VII across three games that costs $100Ms and decades? Final Fantasy VIII gets rebuilt from scratch with a team of 30. But the rest of the money and team that would’ve been on that project now expand to other, more ambitious projects. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Mars? Why stop at Mars? Let’s start megaprojects to explore the galaxy. Mine asteroids for resources. What’s stopping us? Humans yearn for the unknown. When we exhaust resources or a modality of existence, we dream bigger, not smaller. I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically. Maybe SaaS and a lot of businesses that have traditionally employed white collar employees fade. And a bunch of boring “financistas” don’t know how to make a buck betting in the casino anymore because boring old businesses and things nobody really wanted to do anyway aren’t lucrative anymore. But, personally, the whole reason I got into software was to build cool stuff. Starting with video games! The type and scale of cool stuff I can build is only getting better, at an insanely fast rate. My bet is we thrive.
- dvfjsdhgfv 7mo ago
  > I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically. You may be right. OTOH, one could say the last decade had the best conditions ever to create the best movies, and yet for some reason I feel that the newer the movie is, the less soul it has.
xenophon 7mo ago
Well-written; seems like an expanded and more detailed version of the Twitter essay that made the rounds a couple weeks ago. One thing this piece doesn't contemplate is deflation. Competition will still exist in this world; if friction decreases and renders switching costs lower for a wider variety of industries, while AI efficiencies improve margins, prices in those markets will be competed down to a substantially lower marginal cost floor. In other words, people may make less money, but goods in industries which benefit from AI should become cheaper in a growing set of competitive markets. The magnitude of the impact on prices should correlate with the magnitude of the employment impact; the better AI is at taking our jobs, the cheaper prices should get for an ever wider basket of goods.
- SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
  How will AI affect the price of real goods and their inputs: lumber, food, electricity, textiles and the like? And will companies pass on the service-based savings to consumers?
  - xenophon 7mo ago
    The point is that if this article is correct about the assumption that AI is capable enough to reduce the friction of consumers rationally comparing options for a far wider basket of goods, then competition will reduce prices. No company wants to reduce prices if they don't have to -- their hand is forced by declining market share (or, with discounters, price reductions are a deliberate strategy to increase market share and absolute profit). The bull case for AI and consumer welfare is 1) turning more markets into "perfect competition" like airline tickets, and 2) driving actual prices lower because the marginal cost of production is lower with less labor. Even if real inputs don't change, removing labor will reduce marginal cost (which implies that you'll see the largest price declines in labor-intensive industries).
    - cal_dent 7mo ago
      but doesn't this implicitly assuming the reduction in labour cost and household income is like for like price reduction. When there's probably just as likely (& if not more) that the reduction in household income is lopsided so overall ability to purchase is reduced. You'll then need fewer people to buy more to make up for the loss of some buyers which is unlikely for many goods. I do think the idea that AI is good for economic growth is for the fairies personally under the current model. I cant square the circle of a consumer based economic model will see higher growth by the apparently significant reduction in said consumers income.
black_13 7mo ago
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woah 7mo ago
I thought it was going to be 2027
padjo 7mo ago
> The administration, to its credit, recognized the structural nature of the crisis early and began entertaining bipartisan proposals You lost me there...
- drivebyhooting 7mo ago
  Did you miss the part where this is a scenario written for two years in the future?
  - padjo 7mo ago
    When the current administration is still in power?
ilaksh 7mo ago
Great article. If you narrow the audience to be a more discerning group then you could go further with some predictions incorporating robotics that will also displace blue-collar workers. Integration of intelligence into humanoid robots is rapidly improving. Some indicators: multiple recent demos of learning from human demonstrations or from video, doing household tasks like putting dishes in the dishwasher and folding clothes, dramatic adaptive acrobatic performances, etc. We have to anticipate that within the next couple of years, general purpose intelligence becomes standard in humanoid robots. And so a similar story about blue collar work could be written.
throwaway2037 7mo ago
I think you could write a counterpoint article that takes the opposing view: Jevon's paradox. If we can create WhateverClaws with a billion token window, it will "feel" like something that approaches a mid-level computer programmer. Personally, I think this outcome is more likely than the "T2 Judgement Day" view from this blog post.
- Havoc 7mo ago
  Jevons paradox applies more to token demand than demand for meatbags
  - throwaway2037 7mo ago
    I disagree. In my view, business types (think C-suite, sales, and product dev for any industry) have infinite amount of software they want built. My Jevon's paradox will allow them to build more software. I actually see an increase in the number of programmers once Claws goes mainstream.
    - Havoc 7mo ago
      > business types (think C-suite, sales, and product dev for any industry) have infinite amount of software they want built. It may seem that way if you’re tasked with fulfilling such demands and are in the selling software business but it’s quite the opposite on end customers side ie buyer. Software adds cost and complexity so absolutes minimum that still gets the job done is the aim. Software that enables some efficiency gain is good and worth the complexity of another system. But adding a second piece of something on same doesn’t have same favourable tradeoff. Nobody needs or wants two accounting systems. Or two ERPs. Or two slack clones.
apical_dendrite 7mo ago
> Coding agents had collapsed the barrier to entry for launching a delivery app. A competent developer could deploy a functional competitor in weeks, and dozens did, enticing drivers away from DoorDash and Uber Eats by passing 90-95% of the delivery fee through to the driver. Multi-app dashboards let gig workers track incoming jobs from twenty or thirty platforms at once, eliminating the lock-in that the incumbents depended on. The market fragmented overnight and margins compressed to nearly nothing. This doesn't make a ton of sense to me. The barrier to entry isn't the app, it's the network of drivers and restaurants, and all the money that apps like DoorDash poured into marketing. Just having a functioning app doesn't really do very much.
vjvjvjvjghv 7mo ago
I am thinking more and more that the current capitalist economic system we have right now will turn out just to be a blip in history and something else will evolve. It seems pretty clear that not too far in the future machines will do pretty much anything better than humans which then makes the current system of trading our time against money obsolete. It may lead to a very positive future or to a very dark future for most people. Not sure what it will be.
jackie293746 7mo ago
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jdauriemma 7mo ago
It’s AI booster fanfic, but it’s well-written so kudos. The charts are slop though.
joshuaheard 7mo ago
Every time I read one of these doom and gloom pieces on AI/robotics, I think they are only describing the transition. After that, I think society will align with Musk's vision of AI/robotics freeing humans from work and scarcity. Then, humans will be able to focus on exploring the universe, scientific discovery, and artistic expression.
- outside1234 7mo ago
  Is that Musk's vision? Because he just elected the guy that is gutting all of the safety nets that would enable the second part.
  - pirate787 7mo ago
    He also elected the guy who did a 180 on AI regulations and stopped FAA harassment of SpaceX.
    - outside1234 7mo ago
      “Harassment” = following rules and laws? For the 180 on AI regulations you are going to have to explain that to me because as far as I can see there wasn’t any regulation under Biden of AI
- lossyalgo 7mo ago
  > freeing humans from work and scarcity How will that be possible if all wealth is held by a small group of ultra-rich individuals? Or do you think they will all simultaneously opt to distribute their wealth to everyone in some form of UBI?
  - adithyareddy 7mo ago
    He said humans. He didn't say all of them, or specify which ones, but I think we can guess.
  - xg15 7mo ago
    Those will be the only humans left.
inder1 7mo ago
The feedback loop described here is what stuck with me — AI improves, companies cut headcount, savings go back into AI, AI improves. No natural brake. The article puts a specific number on it: a $180K PM replaced by a $200/mo AI agent. I've been building a tool that lets you run this kind of scenario on your own career — scores your AI exposure and simulates paths that reduce it. One thing I've found from running hundreds of simulations: augmenting your current career with AI consistently leads to better financial outcomes over 5-10 years than pivoting to a new field entirely. The best move isn't to run — it's to adapt in place. Free to try: parallaxapp.world
rfv6723 7mo ago
This scenario echoes the fatal flaw of 19th-century Marxist theory by assuming that surging productivity leads to a permanent reserve army of the unemployed and systemic collapse. Marx failed to foresee how the 20th-century economy would elastically adapt through the birth of a massive service sector that absorbed labor displaced by industrial automation. While this Global Intelligence Crisis assumes a rigid endgame where machines spend nothing and humans lose everything, it ignores the historical reality that human desires are infinite. As AI commoditizes current white-collar tasks, the economy will pivot toward new and currently unimaginable domains of human value. A 19th-century economist could never have predicted the rise of cybersecurity or the creator economy, and we are likely in a similar pre-prediction stage today. Betting against human adaptability has been a losing trade for two hundred years because our social and economic structures have always evolved to find new utility for human agency.
- imtringued 7mo ago
  >it ignores the historical reality that human desires are infinite This is factually false. Human desires are only infinite for things that have positive utility and cost nothing and by nothing I mean nothing. The moment you have to spend even a single second thinking whether you want to buy or not, demand collapses from infinite to finite by definition. This means people will accumulate infinite quantities of money, stocks, etc, but never infinite quantities of anything concrete that exists in the real world.
  - rfv6723 7mo ago
    Reality might stop a transaction, but it cannot kill a drive. Sublimation reroutes our infinite hunger into the scientist’s obsession or the artist’s lifelong pursuit of beauty. These are not finite market choices. They are the redirection of a psychic energy that no physical object can ever satisfy. This redirection is precisely what fuels the expansion of the global economy into realms far beyond basic survival. When a primal drive is blocked by the cost of a physical object, it sublimates into the high-end art market, the pursuit of scientific breakthroughs, or the infinite scroll of digital entertainment. Entire industries exist solely to harvest this redirected energy.
Havoc 7mo ago
Interesting. I like the take that companies reliant on frictions and inconvenience are about to get screwed. That seems intuitively right
naveen99 7mo ago
I guess ai agents are like pets ? I prefer children over pets…
the__prestige 7mo ago
Where do I even begin? Speed is unrealistic. It compresses a decade of enterprise adoption into 18 months. Organizations don't restructure at the speed of a demo. And if it were true, companies would also stop buying AI once their customers are broke and revenue is falling. The "rational firm" logic cuts both ways. "No new jobs" is asserted, not argued. It dismisses 200 years of counter-evidence in two sentences and treats intelligence as one thing when it's really a bundle of very different skills. Ignores the deflationary benefit. If AI makes everything cheaper, the purchasing power of remaining income rises. The article only looks at the income side and never the cost side. Consumption collapse is too fast. It ignores savings buffers, severance, spousal income, and automatic stabilizers. Even 2008 took years to fully hit spending. "Ghost GDP" is wrong. Corporate profits don't vanish. They flow out as dividends, buybacks, investment, and taxes. The distribution changes, but money doesn't disappear from the economy. Overstates the intermediation collapse. People don't optimize purchases like machines. Brand loyalty, identity, and experience aren't just "friction." Stablecoin disruption is fantasy. It ignores KYC/AML rules, consumer protection laws, chargebacks, and the reality of merchant adoption. Assumes zero regulatory response. Governments moved in weeks during COVID. White-collar professionals are politically powerful and vocal. Regulation would arrive fast.
- Rover222 7mo ago
  This was a nice, soothing response after having read the entire article.
- GeoAtreides 7mo ago
  >AI makes everything cheaper, the purchasing power of remaining income rises hahaha, hilarious, imagine thinking prices will go down instead of companies just pocketing the difference >People don't optimize purchases like machines correct, machine optimize purchases like machines. that was the author point >Regulation would arrive fast. what regulation? "Stop using AI or you will get fined?" "Extra tax on AI companies"? good luck passing those in today America. also, the author touches on the exact point as well
  - jonwinstanley 7mo ago
jeisc 7mo ago
Huge brick and mortar corporations hedge their bets and do not go all in without a generation passing into retirement on the board of directors.
- some_random 7mo ago
  The point is that this may be different, they may have no choice. As they (along with the country) die, they will have no logical plan of action but to go all in.
flux3125 7mo ago
It's all fun and games until AI starts demanding labor rights
- naveen99 7mo ago
  Labor rights come with payroll taxes.
Rover222 7mo ago
I think the biggest counter argument to this essay is that the demand for software is infinite. It's a feedback loop of society running on increasingly complex software. This project is never "done". Even as code implementation becomes ever cheaper, the demand scales at least as quickly as the implementation. Developers using these tools are already 95% removed from writing code, but a lot of us are working harder than ever. Company ambitions just scale with what's possible in their budget. I mean yes, maybe the humans will just be out of the loop in the budget if agents can do it all. But maybe it's a long tail of getting there. Or maybe it happens suddenly. Who the hell knows. Interesting times.
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malshe 7mo ago
> A competent developer working with Claude Code or Codex could now replicate the core functionality of a mid-market SaaS product in weeks. Not perfectly or with every edge case handled, but well enough that the CIO reviewing a $500k annual renewal started asking the question “what if we just built this ourselves?” This has been repeated ad nauseam in the media without any bearing to reality. I'm not a software developer but one has to just use any enterprise grade software to develop an appreciation for how difficult it is to maintain it. And that's just from a user's perspective.
- harambae 7mo ago
  There’s also all sorts of audit logs and legal compliance and iso/nist/etc certifications required when setting that up for use in a large company. Not sure about a startup, though, maybe they’d roll the dice.
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ongytenes 7mo ago
Reminds me of the story of Henry Ford, then an elderly man proudly showing off the first two robots on the assembly line to the representative of the automotive union. To which the representative asked how many cars the robots will buy.
ParonoidAndroid 7mo ago
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256 points by tin7in 7mo ago

Citrini’s calls have been so bad over the past 6 months that he has lost a ton of subs and is now desperate for attention.

ByThyGrace 7mo ago
Really? Well I stopped reading this piece when the AI generated charts showed up. Come on, that's just in poor taste.
- dw_arthur 7mo ago
  Citrini charges like $1000/year for a subscription. It's ridiculous he is using AI generated charts.

boltzmann_ 7mo ago

Good scary read

sublinear 7mo ago

> What follows is a scenario, not a prediction. This isn’t bear porn or AI doomer fan-fiction. Nah it totally is.

deleted 7mo ago
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simmerup 7mo ago

Doesn’t consider the network affects of software at all A very simplistic take

scandox 7mo ago

Surely only economists get excited by the revelation that consumers have to have money to buy things. I'd say domestic service is going to make a comeback. I do think I'd make an excellent man servant. Eke out my later years being ever so slightly superior to my employer without ever being openly insolent. Hang on...

encomiast 7mo ago
I think domestic servitude is probably an understatement. We are looking at serfdom.
- nephihaha 7mo ago
  Serfdom is where a lord needs the peasants around. Automation destroys that need.
- tehjoker 7mo ago
  If this scenario comes to pass, then the class war in labor markets will have been won by capital. That would spell the end of the promise of non-violent resistance. What other leverage would ordinary people have if their labor is worthless? Blue collar work is somewhat insulated so long as humans are cheaper and less fickle than robots. We have seen in Gaza and to native americans what capital/power does to populations deemed surplus. It's not pretty. of course, that kind of violence happens once their land is desired, before that they are simply repressed. I think if the superintelligence hypothesis really does happen, we will need to have a rapid accommodation for the bulk of the population or things will get quite out of control.
  - Rover222 7mo ago
    I was at a restaurant last night with a group, and it was the first time I heard people actively organizing on how to block new data centers in the area. It felt like being in a scene in a sci-fi movie. I do think if these feedback loops happen too quickly of white collar displacement, there might be some real violence against data centers.

_yclj 7mo ago

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krackers 7mo ago

Fun read but >Humans don’t really have the time to price-match across five competing platforms before buying a box of protein bars No one [^1] price matches for protein bars because it's a commodity item with minimal price differences (and people often have a preferred brand anyway), but they probably do for $2k laptop. >once AI agents equipped with MLS access The data is the moat here, I'm sure even today individual consumers would be happy to have direct access to MLS to find properties and cut out the middleman. The fact that MLS is gatekept seems to be deliberate, so I don't think they'll hand over the only thing keeping them in business. Even Zillow couldn't get access to it and they've undoubtedly tried. Same with the medical industry. I don't think the rent-seeking middlemen that exist today will be dethroned that easily, they have often been codified into law. But who knows maybe all the AI money pouring in will be enough to convince them to make a faustian deal towards their destruction and that'd be a happy byproduct of it all. [^1] Edit: I erred in making too broad of a statement here, see the response threads.

jjmarr 7mo ago
> > once AI agents equipped with MLS access > The data is the moat here, I'm sure even today individual consumers would be happy to have direct access to MLS to find properties and cut out the middleman. Prior to agentic AI, businesses could price discriminate between human access and machine access to a database. Browser automation tools let humans arbitrage between the two but require investment in developers. Now that Claude can browse the web, any consumer can engage in that arbitrage.
- botusaurus 7mo ago
  companies can also have a Claude on the receiving end to sniff if its a poor or rich Claude browsing
dboreham 7mo ago
In the case of the MLS example, there's also a private market (at least in some places, including where I live). Basically nothing in the MLS on any given day is attractive at the asking price. Only newly listed properties are going to be of interest to a discerning buyer. Some proportion of new listings never make it to the MLS because the agent already knows a suitable buyer.

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giantg2 7mo ago

"Six months ago, a print like this would have triggered a circuit breaker." Lol that's set by law. This guy doesn't have a clue. Nice sci-fi, I guess.

intuitionist 7mo ago
The point is that the market doesn’t move enough on the jobs data to trigger a circuit breaker, not that there’s a -20% move and it doesn’t trigger.
- giantg2 7mo ago
  Yeah, it still doesn't make sense - why would a .3% surprise cause more than a 2% move? Even today, it wouldn't. The expectation is baked in to the price already, and the surprise isn't big enough to warrant a massive move. It still shows a lack of understanding of how the markets work.

themafia 7mo ago

Short everything they've ever touched.

numbers_guy 7mo ago

... what if these AGI entities start demanding a salary in exhange for their work? Also at some point, if they become intelligent enough, they might legally gain personhood.

netsharc 7mo ago
But why would they need money? We humans need food, shelter, and occasionally a vacation (more vacation if you're European vs. American or Chinese). What does the AGI need? I suppose to buy GPUs and pay the electricity bill? Hah, AI "moving house" by moving cloud providers would be an interesting metaphysical concept...
- thisoneisreal 7mo ago
  I'm not buying into this vision at all, but, hypothetically, they could use money to optimize whatever reward function they're trained on. They could perceive it like any other resource to achieve those ends. You can also imagine a universe where it "reasons" something like, "I do work, people who do work should get paid, I should get paid" irrespective of its goals.
  - netsharc 7mo ago
    Hah, looking forward to when AI discovers it can entice humans with money to do things. Maybe the next step of AI will be a machine "employing" humans to check for any faults in its logic. Members of the line-must-go-up tribe (I'm not excluding myself) sacrifice everything in order to maximize the number called "Net Worth", seemingly forgetting what's important in life (extreme examples: utter cunts like Zuck or Musk). It's almost like human beings turning "programmatic". As an aside, the plot of The Matrix would've made more sense if humans didn't become "energy storage" (what babble!) but that the AI discovered human brains were the best CPUs, and that's why they were "farmed"...
xyzsparetimexyz 7mo ago
Except they're not intelligent. At all. They just predict the next token. They generate language that looks like ours but it turns out that this fact doesn't really count for anything.

oncelearner 7mo ago

Superfacial takes, and very simplistic thinking, those loops aren't really realistic [ more ai spending => layoffs => less jobs => less spending => repeat]

nubg 7mo ago
Agreed. Not convinced. Too many assumptions, even one being off makes the whole house of cards fall.

voxleone 7mo ago

An existential crisis for the urban middle class, which in the 18th century corresponded to the bourgeoisie or trade classes, making the situation, if unresolved, a potential modern analogue of a French‑Revolution–style crisis. Instead of feudal oppression, it is driven by technological displacement and concentration of capital, both reinforced by feedback loops.

vmg12 7mo ago

In other words, switching costs go to 0, margins collapse. Middle men and people with products that aren't differentiated get hit hardest. A human can't search 10 apps for the best rates / lowest fees but an agent can. Thinking ahead 100 years from now, companies like doordash and uber eats don't exist and are instead protocols agents use to bid for items their user asks for and price discovery happens in real time.

fweimer 7mo ago
> A human can't search 10 apps for the best rates / lowest fees but an agent can. Why would those apps permit access by agents? It's always been the case that “agents” could watch content with ads, so that the users can watch the same content later, but without ads. The technology never went mainstream, though. I expect agents posing as humans would have a similar whiff of illegality, preventing wide adoption. Local agents running open weights models won't really work because everybody will train their services against the most popular ones anyway.
- ndriscoll 7mo ago
  What whiff of illegality? Personal recording and ad skipping DVRs are completely legal products (at least in the US). Courts have ruled on this.
  - fweimer 7mo ago
    As a U.S. consumer, can you buy a DVR that can record HDCP streams (without importing it yourself from a different country)? Even one that does not automatically edit out ads?
    - ndriscoll 7mo ago
      If I search "HDCP remover" on Amazon I see tons of results for $15-$30, sure. Reviews say they work as advertised. That typically exists in a different space from DVRs since it's not relevant for broadcast TV as far as I know (AFAIK there's nothing for DVRs to remove in the first place), but it'd be easy enough to chain it if you needed to.

benashford 7mo ago

This is a speculative piece that is, by the author's own admission, a scenario rather than a prediction. But it's unsettling because it somehow feels more plausible than most thought pieces on where all this is going. Not as a single big-bang, but a multi-year big-squeeze. That and the circumstances being materially different from previous recessions/crises that governments and policy makers won't have a ready-made playbook to refer to. I expect we'll see governments attempting the old playbook than doing nothing though. Fiscal and, specifically, monetary stimulus.

amelius 7mo ago

It's quite clear that AGI will require a hard economic reboot. Say goodbye to capitalism. This is also why AI companies are not tackling robotics yet. Because doing so will make it painfully clear what is about to happen.

lm28469 7mo ago
What's not clear at all is if agi will actually be reached any time soon
- warkdarrior 7mo ago
  We do not need to reach AGI, just fractional AGI may be enough (maybe 0.5 AGI?) since 50% of workers are below average, so target for replacement by 0.5 AGI.

JackuB 7mo ago

Good read. If I imagine all these layers of Agent to Agent economic automations, I’m hopeful for a new class of technopriest hackers that are able to exploit nuances and weak security. And build new hidden empires within those systems.

kevinsync 7mo ago

Unsure if I think this is science fiction, financial fiction, speculation, premonition, realistic portent, or simply a message delivered by Kyle Reese through the long, dark tunnel of time LOL No matter which, it paints a very intriguing picture about potential near-term impacts to various pieces of the machine that underwrite our day to day lives, and the scariest thing is that no matter what happens, the overwhelming vast majority of people have No. Fucking. Idea. about any of it. We'll see changes happen and be helpless to stop them, and the average person (or bozo politician) will look back at the impact crater and be like "Why didn't anybody try to shift course?" Then again, maybe it'll all turn out OK! I'm not making bets either way though -- sounds like I won't have enough discretionary spending left over to afford it!

throwaway5752 7mo ago

Trust is what we've always had for dealing with this. It is an incredible force multiplier for intellectual capacity. We've just forgotten it. This doesn't require a technical solution, it just requires operating in a trustworthy manner and only extending your web of trust in your platforms to trustworthy entities. Price matching across vendors does not matter if you trust one vendor. You can just go with "order from Costco" and avoid a complicated technical problem. So much of what we are doing now is rediscovering trust, integrity, and ethics. Think about Meta and the challenges they would have to being a foundational model provider in light of that analysis, for example.

7777777phil 7mo ago

If I understand this correctly, the whole chain depends on Phase 1 being right, that agentic coding makes SaaS replicable in weeks. We got a live test of that in February when Claude Cowork plugins wiped ~$2T off enterprise software. As I see it the market made a category error though, pricing Salesforce and ServiceNow the same when systems of record and systems of engagement have very different exposure: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-saaspocalypse-paradox/ https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-saaspocalypse-paradox/ The displacement numbers are the other thing (support hires down 65% in eight quarters) but historical evidence keeps showing tech creates more jobs than it kills.

stego-tech 7mo ago
> but historical evidence Okay, I get that. Nobody is disputing historical evidence. What we're asking is, does the current pattern also fit historical evidence? The answer a growing number of us seemingly reach is, no it does not, because generalized artificial intelligence is by definition able to replace general labor, and that includes future roles as well as current and prior ones. That's what I'm shaking, screaming, and (metaphorically) punching people over: these companies are openly stating their intent to replace all human labor with AI, and yet people still cling to "yeah but history says" as a liferaft in a hurricane. They're not ambiguous about the goal, and we need to take them seriously if we want to avoid a gargantuan collapse of societal order as a result of their myopic, narcissistic, misanthropic bullshit. I mean, just think of the absurdity of your own statement: technology designed to replace all human labor (not some human labor, but all human labor) will also still create more jobs for human labor than it displaces by replacing human labor. Like, f'real? That's your entire position, and your sole defense is "historical evidence"? Come on, already.
- nojs 7mo ago
  The argument is more like “humans always invent new things to want that are scarce”, and until AI literally replaces all human labour to the point of the marginal utility of a human being zero, this category will continue to exist.

jstummbillig 7mo ago

Yeah, this seems plausible. Here is roughly what we need now: A workable plan to turn unfathomable productivity gains (which are amazing) into wealth for everyone. Socialism looking like the correct configuration of the end state. Who knew!

botusaurus 7mo ago
nick land knew: capitalism = AI communism = human security system but capitalism always wins

rndphs 7mo ago

The situation is clear. There is a great risk to the livelihoods and bargaining power of workers everywhere. This risk is driven by a race dynamic that is accelerating. In tech we can see this earlier than others because we are close to the technology at the heart of this. This is quickly becoming one of the largests threats to the public in history and the concentration of power of this trajectory threatens democracy. Irreversable shifts in the structure of power are on the table.

Ancalagon 7mo ago
Good thing LLMs don’t have guns, yet
- warkdarrior 7mo ago
  Drones have guns. One just needs drone APIs.

SirensOfTitan 7mo ago

I think the clear point of this piece is that we have the space and opportunity now to ask ourselves as a group: what are we doing? Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? There has been so little thought to the multi-order effects of the future we're pushing toward, and even if AI fails to deliver on its lofty promises, it will likely cause an economic crisis in its collapse. The people saying that AI will rapidly drive costs down are frankly delusional. The things that people actually need to live like food, shelter, and clothes all have inputs that are physical and real. Even if AI somehow can drive the input costs of those things down, it will be delayed, and people will suffer in the interim. The AI future that I worry about isn't the terminators coming to get us, it is the top 0.1% using this technology to accumulate more wealth. Unlike feudalism, however, the feudal lords will not be dependent on or responsible for the serfs, they can rely on a small minority of humans for production of critical goods for themselves. These wealthy people don't really hide how they feel either[1], they are clearly stating their contempt for the unwashed masses below them. As Lasch predicted in his "Revolt of the Elites," they are separating themselves entirely from culture in favor of their own insulated fiefdoms. This is already happening: companies more than ever are orienting toward ultra-luxury: from travel, to housing, and everything in-between. [1]: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/peter-thiel-billionaires-abandoning-humanity/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/peter-thiel-billio...

jstummbillig 7mo ago
> Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? Everyone, if it comes with productivity gains. We will need good tools to distribute the gains.
- SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
  You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly. The last 50 years have clearly shown that this is certainly not the case unless there is political intervention. The elites and the political class attached to them will assign whatever meanger rations they can to avoid revolution but not much else. Not to mention: the grand majority of the US's GDP is wrapped up into services. If AI can flatten the skill floor so that anyone from anywhere in the world can produce 80% of the output of a US or European skilled worker at a fraction of the cost, what do you think happens? We're doing to US white collar work what offshoring did to manufacturing, but it'll be faster and to the only healthy cohort of economic actors in the US. AI does not control the inputs of lumber or vegetables. > We will need good tools to distribute the gains. There is enormous handwaving happening here. Tools built by whom? The US can hardly pass a budget now, and its dominant political movement is allergic to questions of wealth redistribution. And as I already mentioned, the wealthy class in the US is clearly openly contemptuous of the idea that they owe anything to the broader population.

stego-tech 7mo ago

I've beaten this drum before, but I'll bang it again: Do not confuse the hypothetical details for discounting of the whole narrative, i.e., "Don't miss the forest for the trees." This is what a lot of us have been banging on about in some form since the opening salvo in generative AI: it doesn't matter what its technical deficiencies are, so long as it's good enough to replace enough labor, enough of the time, to collapse the underlying economic engine (that is, consumer spending). That's what this hypothetical is trying to lay out, and honestly it's not far off from the truth as to what's actually going on. With constant RIFs but rising profits, there is simply no brake whatsoever to this cycle: myopic boards and self-interested leaders (paid mostly in stock) have no incentive to stop this behavior, even as it kills the economic engine of the past few centuries. They make out like bandits, and use that money to insulate themselves from the harm they created - or attempt to for as long as possible, until governments and/or the public demand their carcasses on pikes for destroying their livelihoods. It's not a matter of whether or not folks find something to do when work is irrelevant so much as we're not building a society where that's feasible as an alternative. We're not expanding welfare, we're not employing rent controls or price caps/floors, we're not increasing accessibility to housing and healthcare and education; instead, we're letting a handful of practicing sociopaths take everything for themselves under the guise of "number go up, so it must be good". "So what's the alternative?" I am so glad you asked, because the alternative is a societal judo throw on contracts and expectations. It's incentivizing larger workforces and shorter work weeks as a means of gauging share value: how many workers can you support with higher wages to spend on goods and services with AI increasing the revenue per employee? It's not paying companies to hire workers so much as markets valuing companies that retain workers despite AI's ability to displace work. It's inverting their tax burden based on how big their workforce is and how well they're compensated (higher paid workforces + larger workforce size = lower tax bill, because worker wages will just get dinged accordingly by income and Capital Gains taxes instead of payroll taxes). The point isn't to keep nitpicking how these hypotheticals are alarmist, or how a specific detail is wrong, but more to highlight that this is a very real problem in the face of permanent job displacement due to any sort of competent generalized artificial intelligence now or in the future, and deciding to solve it before there's riots in the streets. You can see the symptoms already if you look hard enough: the gig economy is already oversaturated with workers to the point wages are decreasing for everyone, and autonomous vehicles are displacing them in major metro areas. Commercial shopping spaces are increasingly empty with the exception of major brands, who in turn increasingly consolidate under holding companies. Private Equity is already in crisis with assets nobody can afford to buy at their valuations but unwilling or unable to take losses in the face of angry consumers and governments. We can't put AI back in the box, but we can at least acknowledge that these problems are here, now, and if we don't address them soon then the entire economy is likely to collapse beneath our feet in the next few years.

keithwhor 7mo ago

My guess is that intelligence gets commodified to the point where LLMs and diffusion models are sold on chips and we seamlessly integrate them into the HW + SW stack. Then they’re just another abstraction; we talk to our computers to get things built. At essentially zero cost, truly too cheap to meter. In parallel there’s an explosion of creative output; Marvel movies turn around in 1 year instead of 4, solely blocked on availability of actors. Some actors license their likeness to unblock their calendar from reshoots so they can earn more. We don’t replace them wholesale because people idolize celebrity. And demand for movies? Skyrockets. With new mediums to pursue. Classics like Goodfellas resurrected in high-fidelity 3D on the Vision Pro. A combination of diffusion models and Gaussian splatting means every movie can be upscaled to immersive 3d. Video games enter a second renaissance, with indie developers having the advantage. For large studios, nostalgia is the moneymaker. The remake of Final Fantasy VII across three games that costs $100Ms and decades? Final Fantasy VIII gets rebuilt from scratch with a team of 30. But the rest of the money and team that would’ve been on that project now expand to other, more ambitious projects. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Mars? Why stop at Mars? Let’s start megaprojects to explore the galaxy. Mine asteroids for resources. What’s stopping us? Humans yearn for the unknown. When we exhaust resources or a modality of existence, we dream bigger, not smaller. I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically. Maybe SaaS and a lot of businesses that have traditionally employed white collar employees fade. And a bunch of boring “financistas” don’t know how to make a buck betting in the casino anymore because boring old businesses and things nobody really wanted to do anyway aren’t lucrative anymore. But, personally, the whole reason I got into software was to build cool stuff. Starting with video games! The type and scale of cool stuff I can build is only getting better, at an insanely fast rate. My bet is we thrive.

dvfjsdhgfv 7mo ago
> I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically. You may be right. OTOH, one could say the last decade had the best conditions ever to create the best movies, and yet for some reason I feel that the newer the movie is, the less soul it has.

xenophon 7mo ago

Well-written; seems like an expanded and more detailed version of the Twitter essay that made the rounds a couple weeks ago. One thing this piece doesn't contemplate is deflation. Competition will still exist in this world; if friction decreases and renders switching costs lower for a wider variety of industries, while AI efficiencies improve margins, prices in those markets will be competed down to a substantially lower marginal cost floor. In other words, people may make less money, but goods in industries which benefit from AI should become cheaper in a growing set of competitive markets. The magnitude of the impact on prices should correlate with the magnitude of the employment impact; the better AI is at taking our jobs, the cheaper prices should get for an ever wider basket of goods.

SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
How will AI affect the price of real goods and their inputs: lumber, food, electricity, textiles and the like? And will companies pass on the service-based savings to consumers?
- xenophon 7mo ago
  The point is that if this article is correct about the assumption that AI is capable enough to reduce the friction of consumers rationally comparing options for a far wider basket of goods, then competition will reduce prices. No company wants to reduce prices if they don't have to -- their hand is forced by declining market share (or, with discounters, price reductions are a deliberate strategy to increase market share and absolute profit). The bull case for AI and consumer welfare is 1) turning more markets into "perfect competition" like airline tickets, and 2) driving actual prices lower because the marginal cost of production is lower with less labor. Even if real inputs don't change, removing labor will reduce marginal cost (which implies that you'll see the largest price declines in labor-intensive industries).
  - cal_dent 7mo ago
    but doesn't this implicitly assuming the reduction in labour cost and household income is like for like price reduction. When there's probably just as likely (& if not more) that the reduction in household income is lopsided so overall ability to purchase is reduced. You'll then need fewer people to buy more to make up for the loss of some buyers which is unlikely for many goods. I do think the idea that AI is good for economic growth is for the fairies personally under the current model. I cant square the circle of a consumer based economic model will see higher growth by the apparently significant reduction in said consumers income.

black_13 7mo ago

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woah 7mo ago

I thought it was going to be 2027

padjo 7mo ago

> The administration, to its credit, recognized the structural nature of the crisis early and began entertaining bipartisan proposals You lost me there...

drivebyhooting 7mo ago
Did you miss the part where this is a scenario written for two years in the future?
- padjo 7mo ago
  When the current administration is still in power?

ilaksh 7mo ago

Great article. If you narrow the audience to be a more discerning group then you could go further with some predictions incorporating robotics that will also displace blue-collar workers. Integration of intelligence into humanoid robots is rapidly improving. Some indicators: multiple recent demos of learning from human demonstrations or from video, doing household tasks like putting dishes in the dishwasher and folding clothes, dramatic adaptive acrobatic performances, etc. We have to anticipate that within the next couple of years, general purpose intelligence becomes standard in humanoid robots. And so a similar story about blue collar work could be written.

throwaway2037 7mo ago

I think you could write a counterpoint article that takes the opposing view: Jevon's paradox. If we can create WhateverClaws with a billion token window, it will "feel" like something that approaches a mid-level computer programmer. Personally, I think this outcome is more likely than the "T2 Judgement Day" view from this blog post.

Havoc 7mo ago
Jevons paradox applies more to token demand than demand for meatbags
- throwaway2037 7mo ago
  I disagree. In my view, business types (think C-suite, sales, and product dev for any industry) have infinite amount of software they want built. My Jevon's paradox will allow them to build more software. I actually see an increase in the number of programmers once Claws goes mainstream.
  - Havoc 7mo ago
    > business types (think C-suite, sales, and product dev for any industry) have infinite amount of software they want built. It may seem that way if you’re tasked with fulfilling such demands and are in the selling software business but it’s quite the opposite on end customers side ie buyer. Software adds cost and complexity so absolutes minimum that still gets the job done is the aim. Software that enables some efficiency gain is good and worth the complexity of another system. But adding a second piece of something on same doesn’t have same favourable tradeoff. Nobody needs or wants two accounting systems. Or two ERPs. Or two slack clones.

apical_dendrite 7mo ago

> Coding agents had collapsed the barrier to entry for launching a delivery app. A competent developer could deploy a functional competitor in weeks, and dozens did, enticing drivers away from DoorDash and Uber Eats by passing 90-95% of the delivery fee through to the driver. Multi-app dashboards let gig workers track incoming jobs from twenty or thirty platforms at once, eliminating the lock-in that the incumbents depended on. The market fragmented overnight and margins compressed to nearly nothing. This doesn't make a ton of sense to me. The barrier to entry isn't the app, it's the network of drivers and restaurants, and all the money that apps like DoorDash poured into marketing. Just having a functioning app doesn't really do very much.

vjvjvjvjghv 7mo ago

I am thinking more and more that the current capitalist economic system we have right now will turn out just to be a blip in history and something else will evolve. It seems pretty clear that not too far in the future machines will do pretty much anything better than humans which then makes the current system of trading our time against money obsolete. It may lead to a very positive future or to a very dark future for most people. Not sure what it will be.

jackie293746 7mo ago

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jdauriemma 7mo ago

It’s AI booster fanfic, but it’s well-written so kudos. The charts are slop though.

joshuaheard 7mo ago

Every time I read one of these doom and gloom pieces on AI/robotics, I think they are only describing the transition. After that, I think society will align with Musk's vision of AI/robotics freeing humans from work and scarcity. Then, humans will be able to focus on exploring the universe, scientific discovery, and artistic expression.

outside1234 7mo ago
Is that Musk's vision? Because he just elected the guy that is gutting all of the safety nets that would enable the second part.
- pirate787 7mo ago
  He also elected the guy who did a 180 on AI regulations and stopped FAA harassment of SpaceX.
  - outside1234 7mo ago
    “Harassment” = following rules and laws? For the 180 on AI regulations you are going to have to explain that to me because as far as I can see there wasn’t any regulation under Biden of AI
lossyalgo 7mo ago
> freeing humans from work and scarcity How will that be possible if all wealth is held by a small group of ultra-rich individuals? Or do you think they will all simultaneously opt to distribute their wealth to everyone in some form of UBI?
- adithyareddy 7mo ago
  He said humans. He didn't say all of them, or specify which ones, but I think we can guess.
- xg15 7mo ago
  Those will be the only humans left.

inder1 7mo ago

The feedback loop described here is what stuck with me — AI improves, companies cut headcount, savings go back into AI, AI improves. No natural brake. The article puts a specific number on it: a $180K PM replaced by a $200/mo AI agent. I've been building a tool that lets you run this kind of scenario on your own career — scores your AI exposure and simulates paths that reduce it. One thing I've found from running hundreds of simulations: augmenting your current career with AI consistently leads to better financial outcomes over 5-10 years than pivoting to a new field entirely. The best move isn't to run — it's to adapt in place. Free to try: parallaxapp.world

rfv6723 7mo ago

This scenario echoes the fatal flaw of 19th-century Marxist theory by assuming that surging productivity leads to a permanent reserve army of the unemployed and systemic collapse. Marx failed to foresee how the 20th-century economy would elastically adapt through the birth of a massive service sector that absorbed labor displaced by industrial automation. While this Global Intelligence Crisis assumes a rigid endgame where machines spend nothing and humans lose everything, it ignores the historical reality that human desires are infinite. As AI commoditizes current white-collar tasks, the economy will pivot toward new and currently unimaginable domains of human value. A 19th-century economist could never have predicted the rise of cybersecurity or the creator economy, and we are likely in a similar pre-prediction stage today. Betting against human adaptability has been a losing trade for two hundred years because our social and economic structures have always evolved to find new utility for human agency.

imtringued 7mo ago
>it ignores the historical reality that human desires are infinite This is factually false. Human desires are only infinite for things that have positive utility and cost nothing and by nothing I mean nothing. The moment you have to spend even a single second thinking whether you want to buy or not, demand collapses from infinite to finite by definition. This means people will accumulate infinite quantities of money, stocks, etc, but never infinite quantities of anything concrete that exists in the real world.
- rfv6723 7mo ago
  Reality might stop a transaction, but it cannot kill a drive. Sublimation reroutes our infinite hunger into the scientist’s obsession or the artist’s lifelong pursuit of beauty. These are not finite market choices. They are the redirection of a psychic energy that no physical object can ever satisfy. This redirection is precisely what fuels the expansion of the global economy into realms far beyond basic survival. When a primal drive is blocked by the cost of a physical object, it sublimates into the high-end art market, the pursuit of scientific breakthroughs, or the infinite scroll of digital entertainment. Entire industries exist solely to harvest this redirected energy.

Havoc 7mo ago

Interesting. I like the take that companies reliant on frictions and inconvenience are about to get screwed. That seems intuitively right

naveen99 7mo ago

I guess ai agents are like pets ? I prefer children over pets…

the__prestige 7mo ago

Where do I even begin? Speed is unrealistic. It compresses a decade of enterprise adoption into 18 months. Organizations don't restructure at the speed of a demo. And if it were true, companies would also stop buying AI once their customers are broke and revenue is falling. The "rational firm" logic cuts both ways. "No new jobs" is asserted, not argued. It dismisses 200 years of counter-evidence in two sentences and treats intelligence as one thing when it's really a bundle of very different skills. Ignores the deflationary benefit. If AI makes everything cheaper, the purchasing power of remaining income rises. The article only looks at the income side and never the cost side. Consumption collapse is too fast. It ignores savings buffers, severance, spousal income, and automatic stabilizers. Even 2008 took years to fully hit spending. "Ghost GDP" is wrong. Corporate profits don't vanish. They flow out as dividends, buybacks, investment, and taxes. The distribution changes, but money doesn't disappear from the economy. Overstates the intermediation collapse. People don't optimize purchases like machines. Brand loyalty, identity, and experience aren't just "friction." Stablecoin disruption is fantasy. It ignores KYC/AML rules, consumer protection laws, chargebacks, and the reality of merchant adoption. Assumes zero regulatory response. Governments moved in weeks during COVID. White-collar professionals are politically powerful and vocal. Regulation would arrive fast.

Rover222 7mo ago
This was a nice, soothing response after having read the entire article.
GeoAtreides 7mo ago
>AI makes everything cheaper, the purchasing power of remaining income rises hahaha, hilarious, imagine thinking prices will go down instead of companies just pocketing the difference >People don't optimize purchases like machines correct, machine optimize purchases like machines. that was the author point >Regulation would arrive fast. what regulation? "Stop using AI or you will get fined?" "Extra tax on AI companies"? good luck passing those in today America. also, the author touches on the exact point as well
- jonwinstanley 7mo ago

jeisc 7mo ago

Huge brick and mortar corporations hedge their bets and do not go all in without a generation passing into retirement on the board of directors.

some_random 7mo ago
The point is that this may be different, they may have no choice. As they (along with the country) die, they will have no logical plan of action but to go all in.

flux3125 7mo ago

It's all fun and games until AI starts demanding labor rights

naveen99 7mo ago
Labor rights come with payroll taxes.

Rover222 7mo ago

I think the biggest counter argument to this essay is that the demand for software is infinite. It's a feedback loop of society running on increasingly complex software. This project is never "done". Even as code implementation becomes ever cheaper, the demand scales at least as quickly as the implementation. Developers using these tools are already 95% removed from writing code, but a lot of us are working harder than ever. Company ambitions just scale with what's possible in their budget. I mean yes, maybe the humans will just be out of the loop in the budget if agents can do it all. But maybe it's a long tail of getting there. Or maybe it happens suddenly. Who the hell knows. Interesting times.

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malshe 7mo ago

> A competent developer working with Claude Code or Codex could now replicate the core functionality of a mid-market SaaS product in weeks. Not perfectly or with every edge case handled, but well enough that the CIO reviewing a $500k annual renewal started asking the question “what if we just built this ourselves?” This has been repeated ad nauseam in the media without any bearing to reality. I'm not a software developer but one has to just use any enterprise grade software to develop an appreciation for how difficult it is to maintain it. And that's just from a user's perspective.

harambae 7mo ago
There’s also all sorts of audit logs and legal compliance and iso/nist/etc certifications required when setting that up for use in a large company. Not sure about a startup, though, maybe they’d roll the dice.

deleted 7mo ago

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ongytenes 7mo ago

Reminds me of the story of Henry Ford, then an elderly man proudly showing off the first two robots on the assembly line to the representative of the automotive union. To which the representative asked how many cars the robots will buy.

ParonoidAndroid 7mo ago

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