The bottlenecks to compute production are constructing chip fabs; electricity; the availability of rare earth minerals.
Chip fabs and electricity generation are capital!
Right now, both companies have an interest in a growing population with growing wealth and are on the same side. If the population and its buying power begins to shrink, they will be in an existential fight over the remainder, yielding AI-insider/AI-outsider division.
Yep, AI buying power winning over human buying power in setting the direction of the economy is an important dynamic that I’m thinking about.
I also think the AI labor replacement is initially on the side of equality. [...] Now, any single person who is a competent user of Claude can feasibly match the output of any traditional legal team, [...]. The exclusive access to this labor is fundamental to the power imbalance of wealth inequality, so its replacement is an equalizing force.
Yep, this is an important point, and a big positive effect of AI! I write about this here. We shouldn’t lose track of all the positive effects.
Yes, but so are ice cream trucks and the whirligig rides at the fair. Having “access to capital” is meaningless if you are buying an ice cream truck, but means much if you have a rare earth refinery.
My claim is that the big distinction now is between labor and capital because everyone had about an equally hard time getting labor; when AI replacement happens and that goes away, the next big distinction will be between different types of what we now generically refer to as capital. The term is uselessly broad in my opinion: we need to go down at least one level towards concreteness to talk about the future better.
Chip fabs and electricity generation are capital!
Yep, AI buying power winning over human buying power in setting the direction of the economy is an important dynamic that I’m thinking about.
Yep, this is an important point, and a big positive effect of AI! I write about this here. We shouldn’t lose track of all the positive effects.
Yes, but so are ice cream trucks and the whirligig rides at the fair. Having “access to capital” is meaningless if you are buying an ice cream truck, but means much if you have a rare earth refinery.
My claim is that the big distinction now is between labor and capital because everyone had about an equally hard time getting labor; when AI replacement happens and that goes away, the next big distinction will be between different types of what we now generically refer to as capital. The term is uselessly broad in my opinion: we need to go down at least one level towards concreteness to talk about the future better.