I am on my way back home after a couple of weeks in India. During my time there, I spent a lot of time thinking about the future of work.
Last week on Dwarkesh’s podcast, Dwarkesh and Dylan Patel (from SemiAnalysis) discussed whether the economics of AI inevitably push us toward a massive centralization of labor, with the benefits accruing to the handful of companies that can deploy the models.
I was listening to the podcast while walking past a daily labor market — less than five minutes away from my family home in Vadodara. Every morning, hundreds of men gather there, waiting for contractors to give them a day’s work.
On my way back from my morning walk, I usually pass a Blinkit depot. Here, young men on motorcycles wait for an algorithm to tell them where to deliver the next package.
Meanwhile, one of the clearest paths into the middle class for millions of young Indians is narrowing. India’s IT services companies are moving away from the mass recruitment of entry-level engineers that helped define the industry for decades.
So what does the future bring us?
A phrase that I keep coming back to is: living below the API.
The lives of millions of people across the world are already directed by algorithms. The intelligence, planning and allocation happen in the cloud. Humans execute whatever part of the work still requires a body.
And we’re investing billions and billions of dollars in robotics to change that too.
I recorded some thoughts on this while sitting in an airport lounge in Amsterdam. Between the jet lag and the exhaustion of a hectic trip, I felt like I was in limbo.
And I feel that our thinking about the future is also in a similar sort of limbo. Stuck between the aspirations of millions of young people in India and elsewhere wanting a better life, and the need to drive a return on capital from the massive investment currently underway in AI.
I don’t have an answer. But I do think the question of what happens to human labor as intelligence becomes abundant deserves more attention and serious engagement.
Follow-up from LinkedIn
Here’s the Dwarkesh Podcast episode mentioned in the post. It does not cover the low perceived uptake of AI or the data-center backlash in much detail, but it contains interesting discussions—including whether AI could cause hyperinflation—and is worth a watch or listen.