Comment by pas

this is not a good way to look at it. it's still 100% driven by humans, through prices. the orthodoxy is not wrong on this one. humans want more stuff.

(we also work a lot to be able to afford many many many things. we could live like the Romans did on a few hours of work per week, but we also want the Internet and sometimes watch movies, and go to concerts, and sometimes go hiking, and thus we sometimes need a car, and roads, and thus we need pavement, bridges, structural steel, fuel, GPS, maps, and sometimes we need an airlift when someone breaks a leg in the mountains, and so on.)

> if AIs have control over news media and telecommunications and can stop dissenting humans from coordinating any sort of rebellion.

meh. control over the media (and people's attention, and their information sources) is already serving a very narrow group's interests. adding AI to this mix doesn't seem to change much in the short term.