Economist pushes back on AI doom: by that logic we'd all be serfs to electricity billionaires
paulnovosad · x · 2026-10-15
Economist Paul Novosad pushed back on AI catastrophe narratives, noting that social media has been catastrophizing every event since 2010 — "lots of online ppl think this is a catastrophe" doesn't move his priors much.
On concerns that AI will concentrate power, he argued the worry isn't economically well grounded: if it were, "we would all be serfs paying homage to the electricity generation billionaires" — i.e., owning infrastructure-grade capital doesn't automatically translate into domination over everyone else.
Related event: Economist Dismisses Social Media Doom Over AI Job Losses(2 posts)→
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