AI bots don’t buy consumer goods and other services.
If people don’t get work they stop buying things. If people don’t buy things, companies don’t make money. If companies don’t make money they won’t buy — or have a reason to buy —- AI companies’ services.
You cannot eliminate a significant chunk of labour cost without causing demand collapse. People saying that there is money in eliminating labour costs at that scale are not doing the whole of the calculation.
I'm not suggesting the people then sit idle. The economy can grow, services can be added, the % done by AI drops, but the raw value of it doesn't. It's just to show that the market is extremely large.
Like agriculture. That market has grown significantly through time, even though it's shrunk dramatically as a % of GDP.
How can people be economically active if their jobs are eliminated from the economy? At best they job-share, and demand still collapses, just in slightly different ways.
AI cannot make money as an alternative to large scale employment, because essentially all the clients of those AI businesses will see demand for their products and services collapse. AI bots don’t go to In-N-Out Burger or Disneyland.
Anything else is fantasy maths, albeit commonplace fantasy in the AI industry at the moment.
Right, but at best (putting aside the tractor's magnifying effect in the Great Depression) you would be looking at employment displacement from one sector to another. Those people went on to other jobs.
Here you are talking about a shift taking employment out of the economy full stop — taking the money that would have gone to "a good chunk of labor", to use your words, and giving it to AI firms.
You are necessarily talking about job elimination en masse — it's the only way this hypothetical source of money is available.
If you take labour out of the market, en masse, you cause demand to collapse. Because they won't be economically active!
No, I'm not. I was using it to size the market for AI. I don't imagine those people just sit idle. They do something else. Tractors took a good chunk of labor out of farming, those people didn't sit idle.
If people don’t get work they stop buying things. If people don’t buy things, companies don’t make money. If companies don’t make money they won’t buy — or have a reason to buy —- AI companies’ services.
You cannot eliminate a significant chunk of labour cost without causing demand collapse. People saying that there is money in eliminating labour costs at that scale are not doing the whole of the calculation.