Venkatesh Rao Likens Fears of AI Job Losses to Mercantilism
Engineer Venkatesh Rao sees the fear of AI-driven job loss as parallel to mercantilism, in which intelligence as a scarce resource could be controlled by elites.
Engineer Venkatesh Rao considers the widespread fear of job losses caused by artificial intelligence to be comparable to the mercantilism of the early modern period. Just as gold once was seen as a source of power and was accumulated by rulers, in his reading intelligence could become a scarce resource that elites seek to control deliberately.
Rao views this fear as a way of thinking that stems from the feeling that human thinking may be in less demand in the future. His comparison with mercantilism serves to show how scarcity and control over a central resource shape power relations. The concern is less directed at the technology itself than at the question of who controls it and who profits from its returns.
At the same time, Rao points to another development. AI could even increase the demand for human thinking, much as early capitalism led people to work more voluntarily. From this perspective, intelligence would not only be a resource that is displaced, but a good whose value can grow through new possibilities.
The debate shows that the discussion about AI and work is not decided by technical questions alone. What matters is how access, control and distribution are organized. Rao's idea that elites could hoard intelligence points to the fact that questions of social power play a central role in the development of technology.
Source: the-decoder.com
5
