The Infinite Work Machine: buyer bots vs seller bots turn AI efficiency gains into more work
Ididit-forthecookie · reddit · 2026-10-30
A podcast essay coins the "Infinite Work Machine": AI's spread through the economy creates a bot-vs-bot arms race that multiplies work instead of boosting output—an AI-flavored Jevons paradox.
- Pricing: Meta's Muse agent hunts deals while sellers' AI tools extract maximum prices, burning subscriptions and compute in a bidding stalemate
- Bureaucracy: insurers auto-reject claims with AI, insureds contest with AI, and the insurer's bot handles the dispute—same outcome, more machines, more cost
- Security: Wiz researchers used frontier models to surface decade-old PHP vulnerabilities affecting 70% of websites, triggering an AI-assisted patching scramble
- Framed via the Red Queen hypothesis: everyone must keep deploying agents just to stay in place
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