[...] Rather than blame neoliberal economic policy, Tegmark shares Brynjolfsson’s view that the problem lies with the digital economy itself. Producing additional copies of digital products is essentially free: without having to pay for workers, companies may allocate the additional revenue to investors. To illustrate this ‘edge of capital over labour’, Tegmark points out that although Detroit’s Big 3—GM, Ford, Chrysler—generated almost exactly the same total revenue in 1990 as the Big 3 of Silicon Valley in 2014, Facebook, Google and Apple had nine times fewer employees than the auto giants and were worth thirty times more on the stock market. A counter-observation could be made that Taiwan’s Foxconn, which makes Apple iPhones and Google Pixels, employs ten times more staff than Apple and five times more than Ford. But in a possible world of permanent low employment, Tegmark is prepared to accept the need for compensatory mechanisms—a universal basic income, strong public services—so that redundant wage-labourers can taste at least a morsel of AI-generated wealth.
[...] Rather than blame neoliberal economic policy, Tegmark shares Brynjolfsson’s view that the problem lies with the digital economy itself. Producing additional copies of digital products is essentially free: without having to pay for workers, companies may allocate the additional revenue to investors. To illustrate this ‘edge of capital over labour’, Tegmark points out that although Detroit’s Big 3—GM, Ford, Chrysler—generated almost exactly the same total revenue in 1990 as the Big 3 of Silicon Valley in 2014, Facebook, Google and Apple had nine times fewer employees than the auto giants and were worth thirty times more on the stock market. A counter-observation could be made that Taiwan’s Foxconn, which makes Apple iPhones and Google Pixels, employs ten times more staff than Apple and five times more than Ford. But in a possible world of permanent low employment, Tegmark is prepared to accept the need for compensatory mechanisms—a universal basic income, strong public services—so that redundant wage-labourers can taste at least a morsel of AI-generated wealth.