A thought-provoking essay by Venkatesh Rao offers a fresh perspective on the profound transition we face as artificial intelligence introduces unprecedented automation capabilities—a reality where human beings, in numerous ways, are required to do less.

Or perhaps, to frame it more precisely, they simply do not need to do as much, representing a subtle yet meaningful distinction.

The Anxiety of Automation and the Agricultural Analogy

Naturally, widespread public anxiety persists. Apprehensions are frequently rooted in capitalist imperatives, making it appear counterintuitive to suggest that the positive mechanisms of capitalism will ultimately make AI complementary to human society. Yet, Rao breaks this down meticulously, illustrating how it democratizes our perspective on human thought and inherent value. This thesis came to light via Nathaniel Whittemore’s acclaimed podcast, AI Daily Brief, prompting a deeper dive into the original text.

To introduce his foundational principle, Rao turns to agricultural history:

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.

Undeniably, the specter of useless mouths remains a primary driver of societal dread. Two sharply contrasting forecasts dominate contemporary discourse: one posits that elites will hoard and monopolize resources, while the other suggests that widespread abundance will render such control practically unfeasible. Rao decidedly leans toward the latter framework.

Commanding Intelligence in an Abundant Future

Several key passages from Rao's work encapsulate this paradigm shift without requiring extensive commentary:

We are moving toward a world in which an ordinary person can command quantities and varieties of intelligence that would previously have required teams of highly trained specialists. Just as I can enjoy food without knowing how to farm, I can increasingly enjoy the products of intelligence without knowing how to produce them myself.
The central political demand may not be for the preservation of existing cognitive jobs, any more than the enduring political demand of industrial labor was for the preservation of agricultural employment. It may instead become a demand for a fair share of expanding cognitive consumption opportunities.
The cognitive mercantilist fears losing control of scarce intelligence. The AI Malthusian fears the consequences of abundant intelligence. Both assume, in different ways, that the demand for intelligence is fundamentally limited. But what if that demand is as elastic, inventive, and historically transformative as the demand for material goods turned out to be? What if the apparent surplus of human minds is an artifact of our inability to imagine what people might want to do in an intelligence-rich world?

These excerpts approach a singular, underlying proposition from various angles: that true abundance, rather than systemic collapse, holds the key to resolving our future challenges.

Deconstructing Historical Mercantilism

Rao utilizes his third excerpt to dismantle Malthusian viewpoints, weaving in historical context to explain the relevance of early mercantilism:

An irony in the historical precedent is that mercantilism was not a philosophy of, by, or for merchants. It was largely a philosophy of militaristic statesmen, aristocrats, and rentier elites who viewed commerce through the lens of territorial power, unearned privileges, and accumulation. Actual merchants, entrepreneurs, and innovators were often discovering possibilities that the prevailing political imagination could barely comprehend, and steadily fought the self-limiting tendencies of mercantilism, giving birth to capitalism as we understand it.

This historical reflection flows directly into a bold political observation regarding modern attitudes toward intelligence:

Consider Donald Trump, who ritually boasts about his own intelligence while treating intellectual workers as a class of servants to be commanded, intimidated, hoarded, or dismissed. His preferred uses of his own intelligence tend toward litigation, negotiation, competitive maneuvering, and extortion, much as the nobility in history expended its energy in hunting, military adventurism, and sport. Intelligence, in this worldview, is admirable only insofar as it is deployed in elite treasure-seeking modes of conflict and conquest. Productive and creative uses of intelligence are lower status. This is not an entrepreneurial attitude toward intelligence. It is a rentier elite attitude.

Ultimately, examining these dynamics evokes a familiar feeling: humanity stands at a critical crossroads, tasked with deciding whether artificial intelligence will be harnessed for constructive advancement or detrimental ends. While perhaps an oversimplification, the democratization of technology remains a pressing puzzle that forward-thinking leaders are actively striving to solve.