Capital, AI, And Cognitive Mercantilism

A new essay by Venkatesh Rao has an interesting take on what might happen with AI as we experience the profound transition into a world with new automation capabilities, a world where, in so many different ways, humans need to do less.

Or, you could say, they don’t need to do as much. It’s perhaps a small distinction.

Look, people are nervous. They’re partly worried precisely because of capitalistic imperatives, so it may seem strange to suggest that the good parts of capitalism are what will make AI complementary to our world. But Rao lays this out in detail, and some of it makes quite a bit of sense in terms of democratizing our views of how people think, and what their value is. I heard about this essay from my favorite podcast, AI Daily Brief with Nathaniel Whittemore, and I had to go read it myself.

Farming the Land

There’s this agricultural analogy, through which Rao tries to introduce the principle:

“The agricultural revolution that helped launch capitalism began overturning the apparent necessity of having most of humanity engaged in farming. Over the following centuries, improvements in agricultural productivity reduced the fraction of the population required to produce food from a large majority to a tiny minority in advanced economies. The result was not a world full of useless mouths. It was a world in which vastly more people could do things other than farm, while enjoying access to vastly more food.”

Yes, I think it’s the “useless mouths” thing that has everybody worried. There’s an enormous debate between two opposite predictions: one, that the elites will hold control of the resources, and another, that the abundance will mean control is practically impossible. It seems to be the second one that Rao is espousing. I’m just going to clip some short quotes that I don’t think need a lot of extra verbiage from me.

Saying Some Things

Check these out:

This, I think, is linked to a politically bold assertion by Rao that follows: