One engineer says AI could make people think more, not less

Engineer Venkatesh Rao says the common fear that AI will take jobs misses something bigger. In an essay on his tech blog, Contraptions, he argues AI could lead people to think more, not less. The Decoder summarized the essay.

The old idea behind the fear

Rao compares today's AI worries to mercantilism, an economic doctrine that came before capitalism. Mercantilists treated wealth, like land and gold, as a fixed amount. Ordinary people counted only as labor. Rao says many elites now treat intelligence the same way: scarce, dangerous and best managed by experts. In that view, it should stay expensive and be kept from rivals.

He says this shows up in how some leaders see openly available AI models, which they treat as a threat. He also says some AI executives use safety fears to gain political influence.

The case for more thinking

Rao points to early capitalism, when people chose to work 300 days a year instead of 250 so they could buy tea or sugar. He suggests AI could do something similar for ideas. It can make projects feasible that were once too hard or too costly. That would grow demand for human thinking instead of making people obsolete.

His political conclusion is that the focus should be fair access to AI, not protecting older knowledge jobs. He also argues AI agents could pursue their own projects and add to demand for intelligence. They need guardrails, he says, but should not simply follow orders.

What is not known

The summary gives no data or forecasts. This is one engineer's argument, not a finding about how work will change.