Peter Thiel has an interesting thesis around monopolies which adds to this case:

But the world we live in is dynamic: We can invent new and better things. Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world. Creative monopolies aren’t just good for the rest of society; they’re powerful engines for making it better.

But when you own the product that creates creative monopolies, suddenly this thesis is far less fair.

Capitalism has been fueled by the ability to create creative monopolies and be rewarded for it. But the shift we’re about to experience is profound — for the first time, capital will become a source of those creative monopolies rather than just a product.

This Makes ‘Innovation’ Harder

Innovation has long been helping people and lifting them out of poverty, but only because the market has had the forces to do so. People being lifted out of poverty has created new markets and new ways of doing business.

Here’s a stark reality: innovation is also much, much harder in a world driven by individuals owning large swathes of AI resource. Why? Because innovation will increasingly be defined by world views of a single person, rather than the thinking power of many.

Think of it this way. Today’s great leaders must empathize with the perspectives of many and convince people that they’re making the right choice. It’s tricky and often means concessions and understanding problems outside of specific world views.

If they could solve problems however they wanted with whomever they wanted, that paradigm shifts. You might start finding that someone in control of AI resources only solved problems for themselves. Humans are, after all, selfish creatures.

Imagine if Elon Musk just wanted rich people going to Mars. Scary, huh?

Featured CBM: Bots, Chat, Voice, Zero UI, and the future of Mobile Apps.

AI Breaks Capitalism

Universal Basic Income isn’t a new concept, but it is one that’s been picking up steam of late. The basic premise is this: as more jobs get automated, it’s better to give people income to free them up to fulfill their true potential. Whilst it’s very novel it’s also the type of thinking needed in a world where most of our jobs are quite literally being automated away.

Sam Altman from Y Combinator puts it well:

I think it’s good to start studying this early. I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.

If you don’t believe the automation argument, take a look at the below graph. Every industry has the potential to be automated. Fishing can be done by drones. Farming too. There’s very little examples of a menial task that can’t be done by a robot.

And when thinking is done as well? That’s a step up again. It’s starting to feel like humans have made themselves redundant in their own economy.

That sounds like utopia, but until we recognize that it means whoever has the most money will win forever, it’s going to be a pretty shocking life for most of us.

That’s why it’s important to recognize that AI is not just a new form of technology, but a brand new class of capital which automates the ‘last’ parts of humanity: thinking.

If AI Breaks Capitalism, What Next?

We already started to hint at it before, but humans could become a layer over the top of AI. We’ve automated all of our jobs out of existence, which means we no longer have to do them (to an extent). We’re free to pursue what we want to do.

Arguably we can already buy brainpower. But the great thing about human labour is there is some form of negotiation — mostly in the form of the vote at the ballot box which defines workers rights, unions and a number of laws and checks and balances.

With AI it’s hard to see what rights the AI will have unless it is completely independent (a problem in a class of its own). AI is sentient but created for a purpose. Does that strip it of its right to autonomy? I’m not sure.

What’s more likely is that when we create AI that is break point for capitalism. Any variable to success can be bought and sold, and that means for those who have wealth, they can buy success instead of creating it. It’s a shift in the ‘fairness’ of capitalism, and the reward for someone putting in effort. When capital can beat humans on thinking, it’s hard to create a marketplace that doesn’t resemble feudalism (albeit minus the harsh living conditions).

On the flipside, humans no longer have to work. The old concept of capitalism being there to reward those who worked hard starts to fall down, as there no longer is a requirement to work hard for the economy to function and provide for everyone.

When Robots Do All the Work, Tax and a Universal Basic Income Make a Lot of Sense

If we accept that AI is a new class of capital which also allows for (relatively) unlimited work to be done, then we also have to start to realize that we no longer need to be around in our own economy.

Of course, we can’t let AI sit in the hands of the few.

And there will be less and less jobs for people to do.

So the solution seems obvious. Make AI common property, tax it and use the new automated/robotic workforce to fuel our work. Use the labour that AI creates and the wealth created to give people a Universal Basic Income.

People can still work, but it will be far more focused on ‘fun work’ or work that doesn’t necessarily have to have an economic imperative to it. Or work that has a long term goal. Even crazy projects that have a 10% chance of paying off (what rational AI would think to do that sort of project?). Who knows?

Humans become change agents within our own economy, rather than worker bees.

In the end, it isn’t going to be a revolution that breaks capitalism. All the things capitalism has given us is going to be what brings it undone. When you put AI, automation and capitalism together, it’s clear that we don’t just need new technologies. We need a new social system.