AI's Biggest Economic Fact: Useful Intelligence Is Getting Cheaper
McDonaghMatthew · x · 2026-07-06
The author argues that AI's most significant economic impact isn't smarter intelligence, but cheaper "useful intelligence." When resources are expensive, people conserve them; as they become cheap, they use them abundantly and "wastefully" for efficiency. Computing, bandwidth, and storage all went through this. Cognitive labor is entering the same phase: shifting from careful use to casual use, and eventually redesigning entire systems around the assumption of "abundant supply."
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