Also Not a Cat @Paynium - Twitter Profile

Everyone ‘knows’ AGI will either make us all unemployed or fabulously wealthy. Except, a rather brilliant (and chilling) paper from a Yale economist suggests it's neither. It says the economy will boom, and our wages... won't. A bit awkward. I've been digging into this 2025 paper, "We Won't Be Missed," and it's fascinating. The premise: AGI arrives and can do all economically valuable work. And the 'compute' to run it gets cheaper and more abundant over time. So, what happens to us fleshy, rather expensive humans? The whole argument hinges on a masterstroke of a distinction. The paper splits all work into two types: 1️⃣ Bottleneck Work: The truly essential stuff. Producing energy, logistics, scientific discovery. The economy literally cannot grow unless this work gets done. 2️⃣ Accessory Work: The 'nice-to-haves'. Arts, fine dining, hospitality... maybe even writing witty Twitter threads. (Gulp). Now, you might think AGI will just take the grunt work, leaving the important strategic stuff to us. Wrong. To achieve maximum growth, the economy must automate all the bottlenecks. It can't be held back by us. So AGI systematically takes over everything that is mission-critical. So... are we all fired and sent home? Surprisingly, no. The model shows people still work. We either help out with the 'bottleneck' tasks or get shuffled off to 'accessory' jobs that aren't worth the electricity to automate. But that's not the interesting part. Here's where it gets properly weird. Your future salary isn't based on your skill, your years of experience, or how 'important' your job feels. It's capped by one thing: the cost of the computational resources needed to do your job instead of you. Imagine that. As compute gets exponentially cheaper, the value of replicating your work plummets. The economy is soaring, productivity is off the charts... but your wage is pegged to a falling technological cost. You're not obsolete, you're just... replicable. And replicable is cheap. This leads to the paper's most brutal conclusion: The share of national income that goes to labour (i.e., salaries) collapses towards ZERO. All the wealth, all the gains from this incredible boom, flow to the owners of the compute. Splendid. Here's what this means for you. Next time you see a headline about a new AI model smashing a benchmark, don't just ask "Will that take my job?" Ask: "How much would it cost to run that model 24/7?" Because that figure might just be your future salary cap. Now, the paper isn't all doom. It notes that society as a whole gets richer, and we could still find meaning in 'accessory' work. But the central economic role of human labour as the engine of growth? Gone. We become passengers, not pilots. The paper's title is "We Won't Be Missed." Not because we're replaced, but because the economy will chug along just fine, growing faster than ever, whether we show up for work or not. Completely changes how I think about the 'future of work'. Makes you wonder what we should really be planning for, doesn't it?