[dofm]

Right, but at best (putting aside the tractor's magnifying effect in the Great Depression) you would be looking at employment displacement from one sector to another. Those people went on to other jobs.

Here you are talking about a shift taking employment out of the economy full stop — taking the money that would have gone to "a good chunk of labor", to use your words, and giving it to AI firms.

You are necessarily talking about job elimination en masse — it's the only way this hypothetical source of money is available.

If you take labour out of the market, en masse, you cause demand to collapse. Because they won't be economically active!

[danielmarkbruce]

No, I'm not. I was using it to size the market for AI. I don't imagine those people just sit idle. They do something else. Tractors took a good chunk of labor out of farming, those people didn't sit idle.

[awillowingmind]

Can you give an example of what people may transition to?

[danielmarkbruce]

lol if i knew the next big industry i wouldn't be sitting here chatting on hacker news.

New industry after new industry has been created over the past 100 years. It's difficult to believe that all of a sudden that stops.