Comment by violiner
3 hours ago
That doesn't really address what I was responding to, though, namely if the cost of intellectual labor is approximately 0. Yes, there is a possible outcome where a lower cost of developing software (which is not the only or even really most worthwhile intellectual activity) increases the amount of software and woohoo now more people can do more stuff and make more money. That might even be more likely. But if the cost of intellectual labor is nothing, well, that really doesn't add up very fast and all that's left is non intellectual labor. I suppose that people can start new companies to sell some new version of tomorrow's garbage, but not everyone wants to do that.
You asked "Don't the people who own the models and the companies who want to want to use the models to do all the cognitive tasks want to make money? Are they going to give their products and services away for free?"
No, they're not going to give their products and services away for free, but I don't think they're going to make fat profit margins. The very tools they're building are helping competitive alternatives to spring up quickly. That's little comfort if you worry about job losses, but the technology is not under the thumb of Altman/Thiel/Zuck (or any other small number of people).