What happens when artificial intelligence transforms the economy? The answer depends on at least two variables, only one of which is technological.
Two trends define our economic moment. Productivity has grown relentlessly for decades, and may soon spike due to powerful artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the marginal cost of many goods and services trends toward zero. Digital goods already cost almost nothing to replicate. Physical goods are likely to follow as physical and cognitive automation advances.
This is the first axis: productive capacity. Technology determines how far we can move along it. AI will accelerate this dramatically, eventually making the cost of producing goods approach zero.
Productivity gains do not automatically benefit the producers. Since the 1970s, American productivity rose roughly 80 percent while median wages rose roughly 10 percent.
"Who owns the robots owns the world."
— Richard Freeman, Harvard economist
This is the second axis: distribution. If AI generates trillions in value, the question becomes: trillions for whom?
Peter Frase combined these axes to imagine four possible futures. This framework maps the possibility space.
Current trajectory: Exterminism
Click a quadrant or drag the sliders to explore each future.
Here's what Frase couldn't have known in 2016: we're in the Singularity. The left side of that quadrant has collapsed. AI capability doubling is accelerating, and inference costs are collapsing. The technology is not going to stop.
Scarcity is not a serious future for productive capacity. Abundance is locked in. The only question left is distribution.
Two paths remain
The technological axis is settled. The only variable left is political. Who will own the means of abundance, and who decides how it's shared? Rentism is what happens if we let current ownership structures absorb AI the way they absorbed every previous technology. The good future requires building the political infrastructure for shared prosperity now, before the window closes.
Once wealth concentrates around new technologies, it becomes self-reinforcing. It is time to shape the future, while it remains malleable.