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As unpopular as SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become in the popular eye, some say the vitriol doesn\u2019t go nearly far enough.<\/p>\n
In an episode of his podcast Ones and Tooze<\/a>, Columbia University economic historian Adam Tooze picked apart the increasingly expensive AI arms race and its consequences for humanity. Among Tooze\u2019s observations: the AI boom is completely upending the long-standing social contract under capitalism, a shift embodied most dramatically by Musk.<\/p>\n During the podcast, co-host Cameron Abadi asked what a \u201cbest case scenario\u201d for AI might look like \u2014 where a human-level superintelligence emerges that can automate the world\u2019s jobs. In response, Tooze pointed to a report<\/a> from the Bank of International Settlements: under that scenario, labor\u2019s share of income could collapse from an already paltry 54 percent<\/a> to just 20 percent, meaning workers would be forced to fight over the remaining crumbs that drop from billionaires\u2019 tables.<\/p>\n \u201cThe share in the total pie collapses, and that\u2019s obviously a huge transformation in political power,\u201d Tooze explained. And though that\u2019s a future projection, the economic historian notes we\u2019re already seeing symptoms of this extreme reversal of fortunes today, chiefly in the extreme wealth accumulation of Musk.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t understand frankly why the event of Musk\u2019s enrichment isn\u2019t more of a scandal, isn\u2019t more a historic moment,\u201d Tooze said. \u201cLike this \u2014 to have a trillionaire in our midst ruptures the social bargain in such a \u2014 just such a dramatic way, like how can we even be any longer talking about being in the same society as this group of individuals who\u2019ve unleashed this technology on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt goes beyond Luddism,\u201d Tooze continued, referring to the 19th-century labor movement<\/a> that saw workers smash textile looms to fight back against economic exploitation. \u201cIt\u2019s not about resisting the technology per se, it\u2019s about asking \u2018which social contract this belongs to?’\u201d<\/p>\n Though it remains to be seen<\/a> how severe an impact AI actually has on the labor market, one scenario keeps surfacing: superintelligent AI fuels a drastic rise in economic inequality, with tech billionaires on one end, and the working class on the other.<\/p>\n Comparing the current \u201cAI arms race\u201d to the actual nuclear arms race, Tooze asks the listener to imagine a \u201cprivate Manhattan Project, developing a thermonuclear weapon,\u201d calling superintelligent AI \u201ckind of like a labor-market neutron bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n And where the Manhattan Project was funded, organized, and staffed by the US government, the current AI boom takes almost the exact opposite approach, following the whims of the ultra-rich.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly, government money has gone into Silicon Valley in various ways,\u201d Tooze caveats. \u201cBut nevertheless, the contrast between the Manhattan Project\u2026 and the realities of the current moment, spearheaded by a figure like Elon Musk, who literally has eviscerated the state apparatus of that first [nuclear] race\u2026 it strikes me that it\u2019s really a regression away from the mid-century arms race model to something that\u2019s much more like the \u2018Merchants of Death\u2019 vision.\u201d (The Merchants of Death<\/a> was a moniker for 1930s-era war profiteers.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re back in that space\u201d Tooze continues, \u201cof private, unfettered, oligarchic \u2014 but global \u2014 arms race\u2026 to my mind, the [AI arms race] analogy is interesting not because of the similarities, but because of the differences it reveals.\u201d<\/p>\n