Could AI Make Elites Hoard Intelligence Like Old Gold?
Engineer Venkatesh Rao compares fears of AI job losses to mercantilism, an old system where intelligence is treated as a scarce resource that powerful people want to control. He argues that AI could instead raise demand for human thinking, much as early capitalism led people to voluntarily work more.
Quick glossaryThe Decoder, Mercantilism
- The Decoder
- A tech news website that publishes articles and analysis about artificial intelligence and related technology.
- Mercantilism
- An old economic idea that a country grows rich by collecting gold and tightly controlling its trade with others.
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