Azeem Azhar sketches the cost of 'manufacturing' a worker: AI vs human economics
Exponential View (Azeem Azhar) · rss · 2026-11-14
In a research sketchbook post, Azeem Azhar explores the economic trade-off between getting work done by AI versus humans. He proposes viewing a worker as an entity the economy must produce: tally the minimum cost of parenting, educating and feeding a human from birth to adulthood, then compare it with the cost of bringing in an AI-capable machine for the same work.
He frames AI as "manufactured intelligence" — not identical to human intelligence but clearly intelligence-like — highly replicable and following classic learning curves. Economically useful human intelligence, by contrast, takes far longer to produce than a chip, with outcomes unknowable for years. The framework feeds into his forthcoming second book.
More from AGI Musings
- Dwarkesh: The avalanche that hit math is coming for AI — superintelligence by 2030 — ColinWPLewis · 2026-11-14
- Open weights are yours once downloaded, argues X post: no one can retake or censor them — alex_verem · 2026-11-14
- Code perplexity evals now measure LLMs predicting their own generated code — DZhang50 · 2026-11-14
- Will anyone actually learn from the AI air traffic control outage panic? — sebkrier · 2026-11-14
- Reddit devs debate AI-driven CS job crash: grad jobless 6 months, 'only the exceptional get hired' — ghumare64 · 2026-11-14
- Scott Aaronson: grad students scared after OpenAI's release of 370 math proofs — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-11-14