Cameron Armstrong on Farcaster

i had a heated debate this weekend with a close friend about AI enabling billion dollar solopreneurs. he argued: if solopreneurs lean on AI to run lean, everyone will be out of a job. the world is worse off, your wealth is less enjoyable, and everyone will hate you. i argued: the tools to achieve a billion as solopreneur are available to everyone. few will achieve $1b, but everyone else has the freedom to create companies and make a living on their own terms. he made a great counterpoint that consumer demand isn’t limitless. there isn’t room for millions of one‑person outfits. most of the value creation will end up consolidating to a few and everyone else is left fighting for scraps to survive. and that might be true. but the evolutions of the internet have demonstrated that when there are more tools for value creation, demand splinters into more micro-niches and the pie grows. kim kardashian has hundreds of millions of followers on instagram. but she isn't the only social media influencer. mr. beast has hundreds of millions of subscribers on youtube, but he isn't the only content creator. ninja has tens of millions of followers on twitch, but he isn't the only streamer. there are literally millions of people around the world earning a sustainable living as content creators. that wasn't the case 10 years ago. the internet made distribution free and content exploded, opening up a new category of career paths. what happens when AI makes software free? better yet, what happens when AI makes a workforce cheap? i think history suggests we’ll adapt, up‑skill and reinvent and ultimately grow the pie. am i naive for thinking this?

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Cameron Armstrong

@cameron

Biggest issue is that previous eras of automation helped surplus labor move en masse up the stack from factories to service/knowledge work (and before that from farming to factories) and it did it over a generation or two In what sector does AI create jobs to absorb this surplus labor if there is a structural shift in how many bodies a companies needs to operate at same output? Entertainment? Doubtful especially in the context of how RPMs (main internet biz model) have been competed down over the past few years AND in light of the incentive structure for content/distribution platforms to just create the content themselves with AI. Maybe everyone becomes a CEO? Insane. Most people want to show up and get told what to do. Period. They want to feel ownership but with training wheels and non existential responsibilities, bc they have other shit they care about besides work. And even if by some miracle everyone did have the drive to do that we’ll just get hyper competition in every vertical to drive down the margin and profit in everything anyway. At least in everything that isn’t a tax on compute (AI megacorps) or payments (Stripe et al). I’m truly at a loss to where people will go. And even if we do find a place for people, can we even adapt the economy fast enough to outpace the hollowing out that will happen with AI at scale? AI tools can replace commodity workers in weeks not years if management is motivated enough. You can’t build companies for hundreds of thousands of people that fast. And if we somehow figure out a different Internet business models where this new infinite entertainment or whatever class works - how are people going to pay?? If we have society wide structural unemployment/underemloyment/informal hustle driven economies then people will just make less and without something like a UBI effectively redistributing a portion of the small gajillionaire class’s wealth accumulation nobody will be buying anything bc there won’t be excess $$ to spend. I’ve gotten into the habit of asking normie/non internet people i meet specifics about what they do for work in the past year or so and all I hear is automate-able shit It is crazytown times fr

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Cameron Armstrong

@cameron

And apparently the next era of biz models on the internet rely on cloudflare just… not giving in lololol https://farcaster.xyz/chrisdom/0xbb43e55b

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