Venkatesh Rao's 'Cognitive Mercantilism': Abundant AI Will Expand Human Ambition, Not Erase It
The AI Daily Brief · rss · 2026-11-01
The AI Daily Brief explores Venkatesh Rao's essay "Cognitive Mercantilism," which uses 400 years of capitalist history—from the agricultural revolution to today's AI agents—to argue that abundant, cheap intelligence will expand human ambition rather than make human minds irrelevant. Cheaper intelligence could unlock new desires, new forms of work, and possibilities we haven't yet imagined.
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