“As an economist, I understand productivity; people lose jobs when technology changes. But the valuations of these AI companies are literally based on the assumption that hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs and employers will buy AI services instead of labour services.”
Dr Denniss said that while much of the attention was focused on the technology itself, he was more concerned about the broader economic consequences.
“What is the ATO’s plan? What are the state government plans?” he asked the committee.
“Again, all that money that Anthropic is betting on is coming from somewhere, and that’s going to have very real consequences for individuals, for communities, for the economy, for the way Commonwealth budgets are drawn up.”
Dr Denniss also challenged the argument that Australia risked being left behind unless it rapidly embraced AI, warning that national security concerns should not be used to justify an unrestricted rollout.
It’s not just the AI business model. It’s the capitalist business model. More workers = more competition for jobs and wages are lower. Fewer workers = higher wages.
What’s funny is that a hundred years ago arch-capitalist Henry Ford knew that the workforce needed to be paid a decent wage, otherwise there would be no market for his products. Nowadays every company seems to assume underpaying and downsizing their workforce will have no repercussions, because surely there are enough people employed by all the other companies to form a customer base, right? Never mind that they’re all doing the exact same thing.
It’s some real tragedy of the commons shit, but the only ones in a position to do anything about it are taught that greed is good and that the line must always go up at any cost. Someday that debt will come due, but they know it probably won’t be them who has to pay it.
And you know when it DOES come due, whoever is there will cry that it wasn’t them and they just “inherited” it from their predecessor.