The AI Middle
We have an opportunity to turn the emergent AI economy into a prosperity engine that benefits most of us, rather than the economic bloodbath it is on track to become. Here's how.
“Companies that are entirely AI will demolish companies that are not. It won’t be a contest.” Elon Musk
“Not if I can help it.” John Robb
We’ve hit an interesting milestone with the economic and social impact of AI. The predicted pivot of the AI companies from pursuing intelligence (AGI/ASI) to autonomous social AIs is bearing fruit. In response, millions of people, many of whom you may know, are now building AI agents (an early step toward autonomy) that can superempower their ability to perform their jobs, pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities, and improve their health and wellness.
One thing that’s clear is that these agents aren’t cookie-cutter enough to be packaged by a company and sold as a service.
They are highly personalized and idiosyncratic, often targeting novel and narrow niches that only the builder can see.
Furthermore, for agents designed to generate profit, whether by improving job performance or by launching a new venture, these agents are highly proprietary.
Here’s a rudimentary example.
The smart guy who repairs my pellet stove has loaded his annotated repair manuals for all the different models he works on into his agentic AI. He’s also added the ability to scan for the prices and availability of new and used parts on eBay, Amazon, and vendor sites, as well as the ability to search repair discussion boards.
This agent enables him to quickly diagnose any client problem, retrieve schematics and repair instructions, and provide a reasonable price for purchasing the required part and installing it.
In short, he’s superempowered his repair business by radically improving his productivity, responsiveness, and customer experience.
The range of potential use cases for agentic AI is vast. From investing and trading agents to agents built to add services to a non-fiction book to (soon) robotic AIs that work as part of a work crew (building them for yourself and others as a service).
Autonomous Wealth
So far, it appears that people building agents are seeing significant benefit ($$) from this development effort. This makes it reasonable to assume that over time, through training, experimentation, and technological development, these early agents will become;
Autonomous (persistent, reliable, coherent, etc.), enabling them to assume roles similar to those of employees, teammates, and coaches.
Superempowerment that enables individuals to generate wealth far beyond what they could achieve unaided in their jobs or in new entrepreneurial ventures.
Valuable (extremely), as a proprietary artifact, to the people who built, trained, and refined them.
The New Middle
With care, it’s likely that AIs could become the basis for a new middle “class.” A successor to the homeowner-based middle class that is currently in a steep decline.
