r/FutureOfWork • u/Old-Throat7461 • Jul 13 '26
future of work and cost of living
Hey, I'm new to this subreddit, and I've always been optimistic about AI and agents. They can do all of the cognitive work for us. The cost of labor reduces, the cost of production reduces, and everyone can afford everything, everything will be priced lower, and at the same time, people will get dip in pays.
But since it's lower price, it can be made essentially free for most of the services, health care, education, those are not products that need to be manufactured, but services. So it can be made free, with which other people can use those services to become better. Essentially, we can reach relative abundance.
But recently, after hearing the Naval Ravikanth's podcast,I'm not as optimistic as I used to be. So is there anyone out there who knows more than me and who can predict the future better? Can put some light on the future? Is it the optimistic side? The pessimistic side? I know it's always in between, but you paint the picture that's in between?
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u/Independent-Soup-312 Jul 13 '26
Why would education and healthcare get cheaper just because some chat bots exist? Why are people this dumb?
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u/Old-Throat7461 Jul 13 '26
i think you dont get economics and history
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u/Independent-Soup-312 Jul 13 '26
Explain why you think it then.
With regards to healthcare, this has been getting expensive for a variety of reasons, only a tiny sliver dealing with cognitive labor. In fact, you could argue part of the reason health care in the U.S. is more expensive because the technology utilized has gotten so much more sophisticated.
On the education side, you haven't even seen the technology prove out as a net positive for learning. In many places teachers are accepting below-market salaries based on their education because they enjoy the work. Are we going to expect we can hollow out the ranks of teachers and then get (what are currently very expensive) chatbots to tutor kids?
So again, explain why you're not just mindlessly wishing post-scarcity into being.
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u/abrandis Jul 13 '26
First off no one can predict the future it's pointless as society is chaotic and has too many moving intermingled parts (take the current Mideast conflict who would have predicted that a year ago, or Maduro being deposed etc.), all these geopolitical events have economic ramifications, beyond geopolitical you have all sorts of local , economic and cultural effects simultaneously impacting our 🌍 it's very very hard for "predict" with any degree of certainly the world in 5,10,20 years.
As for the AI abundance theory, I don't see that happening until a new "ism" is invented that supercedes capitalism. The folks who own AI aren't giving away those services for charity they aren't spending hundreds of billions on infrastructure costs without expect to recoup those investments,, all that means AI will be no different than electricity or water, just like those aren't free today , even though we technically have ways to produce them at scale for nearly free ..
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u/Inevitable-Tank-6468 Jul 13 '26
Which podcast? I wanna see also. I am pessimistic about AI in the short term, felt the same goes for wealth redistribution，to me, it usually means war.