[jernfrost]

I think Hawking has said many important things about wealth and economy in the past. Many economists are very narrowly focused, not considering the bigger picture.

Society and the field of economics have always had to make major changes in response to significant technological change. The industrial revolution ripped apart the old order and fundamentally changed the way people thought about economics.

As Hawking has talked about, I think AI as well will make fundamental and lasting changes to the field of economics, and to how we organize our society.

E.g. I don't think libertarian ideology can survive an AI world. Free market economics makes most sense for the present world but socialist economics might actually make more sense in an AI world.

It depends on how things evolve. Either a rich elite will end up controlling all the means of production without needing workers, creating masses of unemployment, or we end up in a world where everybody is a capitalist. Nobody works, but everybody might own capital they invest in production.

The outcome will depend largely on the marginal cost of production. If 3D printers, robots, AI etc allow production to happen at small scale with similar marginal cost to that of large scale production the capitalism might get dramatically democratized. If not instead we risk a Blande Runner like Dystopia.