The machine gun was invented to make war less lethal.
The inventor, Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling, patented the Gatling gun in 1862. By turning a crank, one operator could fire 200 rounds a minute.
Gatling was inspired by the American Civil War, which started in April 1861 and ended in April 1865. Three-quarters of a million Americans died in that war, give or take 100,000, according to estimates (roughly 2% of all Americans died in the war).
Gatling reasoned that, because one gun could fire as many bullets as a hundred soldiers, future wars would need far fewer soldiers.
He was wrong.
Some 3.7 million soldiers fought in the American Civil War. After the machine gun became used broadly in all conflicts, the numbers only went up. Around 65 million soldiers fought in World War I and 127 million in World War II. There were many other factors at play, of course. But it's safe to say that machine guns didn't shrink armies.
Automated weapons of all kinds, as well as other forms of mechanized warfare, only increased the lethality of war, requiring nations to field even more soldiers if they had any chance of winning.
The same flawed thinking is being applied to AI. The conventional wisdom is that AI will greatly magnify the productivity of each employee, and therefore fewer employees will be needed.
This is also wrong.
What will happen is that the baseline expectation for individual productivity will go way up and the output of corporations will go way up. And in order to maintain competitiveness, companies will need even more employees with even greater skill. Why? Because the competition will have more AI-enhanced employees, and if your company has far fewer they'll be crushed.
Sure, all kinds of companies are blaming layoffs on higher productivity from AI. But this is just so much AI-washing. Inflation, tariffs, market uncertainty, and other factors are driving layoffs, and CEOs are pointing at AI as the reason. But I haven’t seen one shred of evidence that this is the case.
I also don’t see evidence that AI is driving higher productivity, in general. But eventually it will. And when it does, the company that chooses the same output with half the employees will be crushed by the company that chooses to double the output with the same employees.
In 1990, Steve Jobs said that "A computer is to me... the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."
And AI to me is the equivalent of a machine gun for our minds. And like the machine gun, it won’t lead to fewer operators, but greater impact per person.
The inventor, Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling, patented the Gatling gun in 1862. By turning a crank, one operator could fire 200 rounds a minute.
Gatling was inspired by the American Civil War, which started in April 1861 and ended in April 1865. Three-quarters of a million Americans died in that war, give or take 100,000, according to estimates (roughly 2% of all Americans died in the war).
Gatling reasoned that, because one gun could fire as many bullets as a hundred soldiers, future wars would need far fewer soldiers.
He was wrong.
Some 3.7 million soldiers fought in the American Civil War. After the machine gun became used broadly in all conflicts, the numbers only went up. Around 65 million soldiers fought in World War I and 127 million in World War II. There were many other factors at play, of course. But it's safe to say that machine guns didn't shrink armies.
Automated weapons of all kinds, as well as other forms of mechanized warfare, only increased the lethality of war, requiring nations to field even more soldiers if they had any chance of winning.
The same flawed thinking is being applied to AI. The conventional wisdom is that AI will greatly magnify the productivity of each employee, and therefore fewer employees will be needed.
This is also wrong.
What will happen is that the baseline expectation for individual productivity will go way up and the output of corporations will go way up. And in order to maintain competitiveness, companies will need even more employees with even greater skill. Why? Because the competition will have more AI-enhanced employees, and if your company has far fewer they'll be crushed.
Sure, all kinds of companies are blaming layoffs on higher productivity from AI. But this is just so much AI-washing. Inflation, tariffs, market uncertainty, and other factors are driving layoffs, and CEOs are pointing at AI as the reason. But I haven’t seen one shred of evidence that this is the case.
I also don’t see evidence that AI is driving higher productivity, in general. But eventually it will. And when it does, the company that chooses the same output with half the employees will be crushed by the company that chooses to double the output with the same employees.
In 1990, Steve Jobs said that "A computer is to me... the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."
And AI to me is the equivalent of a machine gun for our minds. And like the machine gun, it won’t lead to fewer operators, but greater impact per person.