AI will transform capitalism – but how?

AI will transform capitalism - but how? Technology is going to drastically reshape the economy, and it's within our power to decide what that looks like T he idea that autonomous, thinking machines may one day destroy property, hierarchy and inequality is as old as western political thought. In Aristotle's Politics, the philosopher cites a fantasy from the Iliad, in which machines begin to act independently of human direction, concluding: "If every tool could perform its own work when ordered, or by seeing what to do in advance if thus shuttles wove and quills played harps of themselves, master-craftsmen would have no need of assistants and masters no need of slaves." The dream that automation could inaugurate a classless society is also present in the writings of Karl Marx. In 1858 he imagined the replacement of intellectual property with "socialised knowledge", which would merge into a "general intellect", blowing the foundations of capitalism sky high. Today this prospect has begun to haunt Silicon Valley.