alt Hacker NewsPeople currently assume AI will be an accelerant of inequality because all currently useful models (i.e. those potentially capable of mass labor disruption) are only able to run in multibillion dollar datacenters, with all returns accruing disproportionately to the oligarchs who own said datacenters.
I'm not sure this moat is inevitably perpetual. It's likely computing technology evolves to the point of being able to run frontier-level models on our phones and laptops. It's also likely that with diminishing marginal returns, future datacenter-level models will not be dramatically more capable than future local models. In that case, the power of AI would be (almost) fully democratized, obviating any oligarchic concentration of power. Everyone would have equal access to the ultimate means of production.
> Everyone would have equal access to the ultimate means of production.
You are right that AI can be a fully democratized commodity. The problem is that the current wealth inequality is not the result of AI. Musk became a trillion seeking oligarch not because of AI. It is because the entire financial system is designed to extract wealth from everyone and concentrate at the top. Democratic AI is not in their interest. There will be violence, but not because AI is supposedly a catalyst of inequality. It will be violence from the rich towards the poor, because democratic AI is not acceptable for them.