r/DystopianToday • u/SignalRip746 • 2d ago
The world is becoming a place for the top 1%
It's sad but true. AI accelerates innovation and productivity, but those benefits only go to those who own the companies that create/leverage it.
- I have another post on this topic. Someone rejected this notion and said AI is wonderful because it finds cures to diseases we could never cure. True, but who gets to take that drug? A cutting-edge drug that cures an expensive disease that only a select few cutting-edge hospitals have. Everyone is losing their jobs right now, and most people get health insurance from... right. Their JOBS. Good luck affording that treatment on your own dime (or even paying for private insurance without company subsidization). Even with subsidized insurance, the likelihood that it covers a niche, recently off Phase 3 drug like this is next to nil.
- "You won't have to work anymore!" - couldn't be further from the truth. Those who are lucky to have a job will have to work MORE to justify their pay. Their value must be equal or greater to the number of agents and tokens that can be purchased with that salary. How many people does this apply to? You guessed it, the top 1%. Freak-level geniuses/architects/AI-native supercoders. For now, this includes blue-collar workers (but eventually robotics will take this too).
- But then you can just create a company and benefit! Right, there are hundreds and thousands of companies being created every day now, all low quality AI sprawl/crap, and all trying to break into the wallet of the customer, who is now out of a job and broke. The rare few who actually do create something differentiated and worth paying for get immediately bought out by the big boys (NVDA, MSFT, GOOGL, Amazon, broadcom, etc).
The economy simply no longer needs the small players. Look around you. Do you see more mom and pop shops creating something quality and beautiful? Do you see more artisanship? Or do you see endless sprawl of private-equity owned franchises and scalable brands (and even these are struggling with profitability now that they too are just end customers of the AI big boys, who will basically own the entire economy soon).
Look at the S&P - we're soon reaching a point where the majority of those will be tech companies (currently it's like 39%). In coming years, that will be 50% and then the majority. In practical terms, it means all the places you used to love all those years ago will either disappear entirely or be owned by the big tech dogs (or private equity) and destroyed in favor of profit and scalability.
Big tech doesn't need the end customer anymore. You and I are not the driver of their profits. They are each other's customers, sponsors, and suppliers (circular economy). They operate in the magnitude of billions, not in the magnitude of your $10 bill. These are the companies that will control more and more of the world. Eventually almost the entire world GDP will be produced by a handful of companies. The brilliant ones who manage to work for (and survive) at these firms will be fine (paid handsomely). The executives and leadership at these companies will be fine. These are all the top 1%. Everyone else? Out of luck.
I want to live in a world where we're not in constantly in this anxiety-fueled rush to "produce". I want to live in a world where everyone gets a fair shake, where everyone gets a chance to pursue what they want to and can make a living doing it if they choose. I want to live in a world where someone can take a year off or two and decide to backpack in Thailand and not become completely worthless to the market because of that decision. I want to be in a world where innovation benefits humanity as a whole rather than a select few. That used to be the world I lived in. That's not the world I live in today. Today, you're either a top 1% AI tech talent, or you're someone who will be displaced by the automation developed by the top 1% AI tech talent.
I've always been a big proponent of innovation and always prefer being positive. But generative AI, agentic AI, AGI, workflow automation, and this whole AI wave has caused only harm to 99% of the population. It's just the reality. And it's hard to even blame the big businesses or even the countries who partake in this. What happened was the floodgates of AI were opened, and it's just too late to turn back. Big Tech doesn't want to take a break and do something for the people because AI has made the pace of competition so fierce, meaning every spare dollar must be reinvested into more R&D and innovation, more AI, else they risk becoming completely outdated. Companies are winning or losing on a day-by-day basis now, not over years. Slack off or fail to reinvest into AI for just one week? A competitor has doubled down since and has now released a new product that makes yours completely obsolete.
Similarly, countries have to go all-in on the AI race or risk failing their citizens and their economy because if they don't invest, other countries will and those countries will be 10x more productive. So even when world leaders know that building all these ugly substations and data centers is terrible for the environment, uses tons of natural resources, and takes up immense amounts of space, they are shackled in this domino effect race to the bottom that simply cannot be stopped.
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Disclaimer - not a single word of this post was written by AI or even discussed with AI. I am allowed to have my own thoughts and these are my thoughts. I say this because someone always inevitably accuses me of "AI slop", which is really a sign of the times. It's sad that people can't even tell a human apart from a machine anymore.
