Is AI the new Black Death?

AI will change society as much as the Black Death did.

It changes how new ideas get made, and it points to a new age of capitalism — one where everyone gets the freedom to think, create and build on their own ideas. Nobody needs a large amount of activation energy any more.

The Black Death swept the world for centuries and peaked in the 14th. The epidemic was tragic. It wiped out tens of millions of people. It also turned out to be one of history’s most powerful catalysts for social, religious, economic and cultural change.

As the dead multiplied, society began to change.

The old system of labour collapsed. Manorialism needs bodies in the field, and there were too few left to work it.

A worker could suddenly demand more money, because he was irreplaceable.

Wages rose. Rents fell — the landlord worked out that he had more land than there was demand for it.

The survivors came out ahead. Social mobility rose, and even the poorest could climb and earn more.

New industries bloomed to meet their needs. People who had once struggled to survive now had disposable income.

Land became cheap. Labour became expensive.

With fewer hands available, people built labour-saving technology to make farming more efficient.

The overall effect was a restructuring of society toward something more equal.

Other things changed with it. Conditions improved for women. Medicine improved. The church that had dominated for centuries lost its grip. People did not become less religious — they became more sensible about it, because there were simply fewer priests left to tell them what to think.

The plague was the catalyst then. AI is the catalyst now, and what’s collapsing this time is the cost of thinking.

Anybody with access can think through hard problems that used to be daunting. A legal opinion used to cost you a lawyer. Now you hand the clause to an agent and ask what it does to you.

The general population gets more chances to turn an idea into a real thing, with far less friction than it ever took.

More people can pursue their ideas and make a living from them.

People are becoming more skilful and more productive than ever.

Ideas and results come fast enough now that you can run ideation and mock-ups in multiple versions, test them all, and build on whatever survives.

In this new age of capitalism, the future belongs to anyone who wants to pursue something. Whoever has the will now has the power.

Productivity keeps compounding. My prediction: automation takes us to a point where the ordinary person lives a far better and more prosperous life.

A human gets about four thousand weeks. Most of that short span goes to work that simply takes time. With more time in hand, you stop filling in the spreadsheet and step out of the rat race. You go solve the major problems instead — the ones that decide whether the world ends up looking like the sci-fi films.

Thinking is cheaper than it has ever been. Use more of it, and take the head start.

I can sense the era of the new Apple, the new Google, the new Microsoft.