Ryan Greenblatt says economists underestimate AI’s growth impact even in a 100 million worker scenario
RyanGreenblatt · x · 2026-07-22
Ryan Greenblatt uses a bar-stool thought experiment to argue that people are underestimating AI’s growth impact. He walks through a scenario where 100 million AI workers are effectively super-human: they match top experts across economically relevant fields, work longer and faster than humans, save almost all of what they earn, and could do substantial cognitive labor.
The punchline is that if economists would call that transformative for human immigrants, they should not suddenly become conservative when the same properties are attached to AIs. The post argues that claims of only 3% annual growth from AI ignore how much bottleneck thinking changes once labor becomes vastly more capable and scalable.
Related event: Vast Disparities in AI Economic Impact Predictions by 2035(4 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- AI accusations shake literary prizes from Caine to Goncourt: who decides what's human? — TuhinChakr · 2026-10-26
- Tech discovers wargaming: applying to be Anthropic's tabletop exercise lead — round · 2026-10-26
- RSI is the culmination of the industrial revolution: a factory building a faster factory — tobias_rees · 2026-10-26
- NYT roundtable asks five experts what the rules for AI companies should actually be — ShakeelHashim · 2026-10-26
- Anti-AI content is algorithm gold and very profitable, quips commentator — annetgriffin · 2026-10-26
- Silicon Valley breakdown: five Stanford-area giants worth ~$18T — FinanceYF5 · 2026-10-26