Like all closed-minded Luddites, the far-left Washington Post is panicking over AI and seems pretty sure that the government will have to redistribute wealth if we’re to avoid societal collapse.
“[E]vidence is piling up that the AI boom may instead be widening the gap between America’s economic aristocracy and everyone else,” is the angle of this dumb report. “Data shows that the people making the most use of AI are concentrated in richer urban areas, while disadvantaged regions have lagged behind.”
What’s more, huffs the Post, the top 20 percent are “on a spending spree thanks to investment portfolios fattened by an AI-addicted stock market. And some economic experts are warning that AI could widen the income gap between American workers and business owners that has caused anxiety for a decade.”
One “expert” has an idea to fix this problem, and you can bet WaPo featured it prominently: “They called for the government to tax use of AI and redistribute AI wealth to everyone.”
Have you noticed that no matter what the manufactured crisis is, the answer is always higher taxes, wealth redistribution, and more centralized government power?
This best sums up the Post’s retarded freak-out:
While it’s common for new technologies to be adopted first by higher-income people and regions, Mark Muro at Brookings said that AI could ossify the existing gap between America’s regional economic winners and losers. For decades, he said, “superstar” cities and regions have leaped ahead as they reaped the biggest gains from an increasingly digital U.S. economy.
Below are three reasons why this story is absolutely ridiculous, and my reasoning has nothing to to with the fact that these dumb stories are written (here, here, and here) every time a technological advancement comes along…
- We live in a capitalistic society.
- Capitalists like to make money.
- The best way to make money is to sell your product to as many people as possible.
Whether it is airplane travel or widescreen televisions or computers or cell phones or air conditioning or microwave ovens or VCRs or ice makers or the internet itself, over and over again we have witnessed what was once available only to the well-to-do becoming available to all of us.
Why?
Because that’s where the REAL money is.
AI is not a limited resource like diamonds and mink coats. AI is a service, and you can bet, just like we saw with all those AOL CDs that cluttered our mailboxes 35 years ago, these AI companies have every intention of making AI as ubiquitous to all Americans as the internet, computers, cell phones, and widescreen TVs are today.
Just as we saw when home computers moved from DOS to Windows, AI will become easier and easier to use and increasingly affordable.
The AI wonders and miracles we will experience have only just begun. Sure, as is the case with all leaps forward, there will be disruption and collateral damage. Still, overall, AI will benefit all of us in ways we cannot even imagine. Granted, its benefits to our standard of living will not be counted in an income-inequality chart, but you can say the same for air conditioning, central heat, streaming TV, and access to the internet.
Even the poorest Americans live better than the pharaohs of old. This is an amazing country, and if you don’t allow the dumb and mercenary doomers into your head, this is the best time to be alive in all of history.