Growing Rich in the Age of AI
Beating the wealth inequality paradox
Last month, I heard Tyler Perry halted his $800 million studio development when he saw OpenAI’s Sora. Sora is the ChatGPT version that creates video content by just prompts.
I have seen some of the videos it produced. I think it will get better at video production. And that will change the entertainment industry significantly. Of course, not every video will be AI-generated. But if we assume all the stunt scenes and animation will be outsourced to AI, a lot of jobs will be lost.
Jobs Are Over
One of the highest paying jobs today is a software developer. I have friends who are highly skilled at this and paid very highly. But ChatGPT replaces 90% of what they do already. AI can write code better than humans.
All the developers who have taken a keen look at the coding abilities of AI have acknowledged that the era of being highly paid as a coder is over. We are living in the dusk of it.
The same applies to creative skills like writing. The number of writers hired on projects has declined by more than 60% since the advent of ChatGPT. Do you know what that means?
If you don’t, I’ll explain. This is how society works economically — the rich get access to capital to produce value. And the value they produce has a dual effect. First, they hire a lot of people, elevating income levels. Then they sell a product to improve livelihoods. With AI, that is streamlined.
With AI, you don’t need to hire a lot of people to produce value. You can have a team of 5 for what usually takes 500 people. And gradually, there is a scarcity of jobs. It becomes more difficult for someone born in poverty to become rich.
This is because traditionally, people born into poverty rely on getting good jobs to be able to break out of being poor. That is the essence of schooling. But this has now become 10 times harder because no business will hire for what they can generate with AI.
In other words, getting a good job is no longer a path to financial success. While jobs don’t make people rich, people often use jobs as balancing acts to get on their feet financially before they have the capacity to go out ahead to create something that will make them join the rich class.
But with jobs, especially high-paying jobs, out of the question. The question then becomes about what bridges the wealth inequality gap.
Bridging the Wealth Gap
Why am I saying this to you? I’m saying this because the ideas of countries around the world to cope with this situation are worse. The only thing they can come up with is some kind of universal basic income.
And that is one of the most ridiculous ideas in finance. It has failed everywhere they have tested it. But in the absence of better alternatives, it is still what governments are gravitating towards.
Giving everybody a specific amount of money for the month is almost like slavery. Their lives would be constrained around that amount. There would be no adventure. People can’t aspire. And thus, that society will rot very fast.
There is a better alternative. But it is not under the control of any government. So, they don’t like it. And the answer is to democratize money and each person/family having a brand.
I’ll discuss the idea of democratizing money later. All you need to understand right now is that as long as central banks can fiddle around with what we call money, things will be brutal. There has to be sound money. The era of central bank fiat currency has to end.
The second point here is the most important. And that is having a brand. And this doesn’t mean being world famous. Everybody cannot be world famous. But you can be famous for what you do in your industry. Your business can be famous.
P.S. Continue reading this article in my Rich Culture newsletter — https://www.richculture.co/p/getting-rich-staying-rich-age-ai