AI will NOT Replace ALL Jobs - #135
It's economically impossible... for now.
I spend ~$700/mo in ai subscriptions. The costs of my curiosity are very highβ¦ and itβs obvious as to why AI cannot replace all jobs in the future. Itβs simply: cost.
Money acts as a constraint, not a catalyst.
It introduces friction into the human creative and productive process.
The pursuit of money often redirects energy from creation to survival or optimization for profit.
Without the need for money, humans could create purely from curiosity, purpose, or passion, rather than necessity.
The system of exchange (money) was meant to facilitate trade, but evolved into a control mechanism that determines access, opportunity, and freedom.
The paradox: money fuels creation (through resources) but limits scale (through scarcity and gatekeeping).
True freedom would mean disentangling value from currencyβwhere contribution and creation are not constrained by capital flow.
Money, though designed as a tool for coordination and trade, has become the primary bottleneck to human potential. It imposes friction on innovation and limits the rate at which people can build, create, and explore. In a post-monetary world, growth could be exponential⦠driven by human curiosity and collaboration rather than constrained by capital.
AI WILL DRAIN YOUR COMPANY
In an All In Podcast I listened to a couple month ago, Jason Calacanis says his company hit $300/day per agent using Claude's API at only 10-20% capacity, which scales to around $100,000/year per agent. Chamath Palihapitiya added that he's now asking "what's the token budget for our best devs?" and said AI-assisted developers need to be at least 2x as productive just to justify the cost. He said this is actively happening inside his company or he'll run out of money.
This was always the obvious trajectory⦠AI providers subsidized usage to drive adoption, and now the subsidies are ending. The consumer plans are loss leaders subsidized by VC money, and the gap between what individuals pay and what it actually costs to run these models is closing fast.
I'm struck by the surprise from people who should know better. These are sophisticated tech investors just now realizing that running agents 24/7 burns through tokens at rates that dwarf human salariesβ¦ and my personal experiments have hit this wall weeklyβ¦
A human engineer runs on coffee, remembers context from years ago, builds institutional knowledge, and doesn't rack up exponential costs the longer they think about a problem.
Agents spend tokens constantly, researching and validating, spinning up subagents, and not always super optimizedβ¦ The companies that fired engineers to replace them with AI agents are learning that you can't negotiate with an API bill the way you can renegotiate a salaryβ¦ and frankly, in good ai-implementation, layoffs shouldnβt happenβ¦ only hiring should slow as current employees become 200% more productiveβ¦ as for the ai agents, the meter will continue to run forever.
No. AI will not replace ALL jobs. Itβs just economically inefficientβ¦ for now.
All the best,
ps
We have completed six Builderβs Table workshop sessions with 81 amazing humansβ¦and it has been a joy of my lifeβ¦ I will be opening it up for more public seats soonβ¦ stay tuned!