Ed Elson
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And they just offer no other alternatives.
And I think in my view, one of the silliest predictions is the idea that friction goes to zero.
This is a big thesis that we see in the article.
The idea that all forms of friction in business and in daily life, when you're
you know trying to book something and it takes time and it's annoying all of these things that often involve some level of middle management or human relationships all of that is going to go to zero because ai agents can do them for us therefore friction on which a lot of the economy is built is going to be entirely eliminated that's the way they describe it it's just gone now
That, again, is the wrong characterization.
Because what's happening, it's not that the friction is suddenly eliminated, it's that we now have a technology and a set of companies that are just handling the friction better than the old companies, which is the same thing we always see with technology.
If you look at Visa, which was brought up in the article, or MasterCard,
Someone might make the argument that when they came up with the credit card, they eliminated the friction of paying with a check or paying with cash, and so therefore friction is gone.
No, the friction has just been handled by someone else.
And now the value and the money is accruing to a different player.
The same thing is going to happen with these AI agents.
And the same thing is going to happen for, as you say, you're taking the money away from here.
And now I'm going to spend it on something that is also worth my time.
And so the money is going to go to someone.
The only real concern, if this, I mean, if the doomsday scenario actually plays out, would be that all of the value is sucked up and gone.
literally hoarded with no redistribution mechanism whatsoever into the hands of literally just like the few people that own the AI companies.
Now, that's not a totally ridiculous statement because we're already seeing how that's kind of playing out in our current economy.