Published on December 13, 2025 12:06 AM GMT
This is a linkpost to a blogpost I’ve written about wages under superintelligence, responding to recent discussion among economists.
TLDR: Under stylized assumptions, I argue that, if there is a superintelligence that generates more output per unit of capital than humans do across all tasks, human wages could decline relative to today, because humans will be priced out of capital markets. At that point, human workers will be reduced to the wage we can get with our bare hands: we won’t be able to afford complementary capital. This result holds even if there is rapid capital accumulation from AI production. To avoid horrible outcomes for labor, we would need redistribution or other political reforms. I also discuss situation…
Published on December 13, 2025 12:06 AM GMT
This is a linkpost to a blogpost I’ve written about wages under superintelligence, responding to recent discussion among economists.
TLDR: Under stylized assumptions, I argue that, if there is a superintelligence that generates more output per unit of capital than humans do across all tasks, human wages could decline relative to today, because humans will be priced out of capital markets. At that point, human workers will be reduced to the wage we can get with our bare hands: we won’t be able to afford complementary capital. This result holds even if there is rapid capital accumulation from AI production. To avoid horrible outcomes for labor, we would need redistribution or other political reforms. I also discuss situations where my argument doesn’t go through.
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