Silicon Valley surprises us one more time with a startup that got everyone’s attention! Mechanize’s founder and AI researcher Tamay Besiroglu announced on X a couple of days ago:
This brief announcement was followed by a press release published on https Mechanize website. There are things that got my attention. First is the “absurdly large” potential mentioned: the annual $18 trillion in aggregate paid to US workers and $60 trillion paid for the entire world. It would be crazy not to do something about it, right?!
Yet, the most controversial statement they made has to do with the “vast abundance” people will enjoy, provided that workers will be replace by automation labor tools. Needless to say following such a powerful claim, people across the globe reacted and remembered two of the eighth predictions made at World Economic Forum in Davos back in 2016:
The explosive economic growth likely to result from completely automating labor could generate vast abundance, much higher standards of living, and new goods and services that we can’t even imagine today. Our vision is to realize this potential as soon as possible.
— Matthew Barnett, Tamay Besiroglu, Ege Erdil
This is not the first time when Besiroglu claims that having agents do all the work will actually enrich humans and not impoverish them. Along with Ege Erdil, he made that very clear in a Cornell University paper published on the topic in September 2023.
To our surprise, when asked to explain how in such an AI-automated world will this be good for people, Besiroglu answered that human wages should actually increase because such workers are “more valuable in complementary roles that AI cannot perform.” He went even further by adding: “Even in scenarios where wages might decrease, economic well-being isn’t solely determined by wages. People typically receive income from other sources — such as rents, dividends, and government welfare.”
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT — It is not uncommon for AI tech leaders, ordinary people and elites alike to seriously question how such AI developments will affect humanity on the long run. Following tech and innovation news and seeing what AI development tools are already capable of, one cannot help but raise an eyebrow and wonder what the AI-powered future holds in store. I can only hope that the truly visionary leaders in the industry will pay greater attention to the long-term implications, and not just to the turnover and profit margins.
