General Discussion

To economists like Erik Brynjolfsson and Daron Acemoglu, part of the answer is encouraging the development of artificial intelligence that augments labor rather than replacing it. AI tools could plausibly lift wages by making workers more productive. In theory, such innovations could safeguard laborers’ economic leverage and promote a more equitable model of growth. Unfortunately, in this account, the tech industry’s obsession with AGI has inclined it to focus overwhelmingly on labor-automating machines, rather than the labor-augmenting variety.

Brynjolfsson and Acemoglu contend that the government exacerbates this tendency by taxing capital at a lower rate than labor, thereby incentivizing automation. But they also see a role for entrepreneurs to develop the labor-augmenting technologies that large labs are neglecting. This is what Drago and Laine have sought to do with their own startup.

If AGI ever becomes technically feasible, however, the economic incentives to adopt it will be overwhelming; Well-intentioned entrepreneurs are unlikely to beat it back. In that scenario, our best bet for fending off techno-feudalism will be institutional reform.

The more equitably we distribute capital ownership before AGI devalues human labor, the less oligarchic a fully automated economy is liable to be. And the more democratically accountable we make our government, the better ordinary people’s chances of constraining elites through the exercise of political power, even as their economic leverage erodes.