# AI growth could become disconnected from workers’ livelihoods

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-growth-could-become-disconnected-from-workers-livelihoods/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Tristan Harris](https://realalpha.app/people/tristan-harris/) · Tristan Harris is a tech ethicist, entrepreneur, and cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology. · Co-founded the Center for Humane Technology and featured in Netflix's The Social Dilemma; former Google design ethicist.
- Host: [Chris Williamson](https://realalpha.app/people/chris-williamson/) · Host, Modern Wisdom
- Show: Modern Wisdom
- Episode: [AI Insider: “They’re Building Bunkers for a Reason” - Tristan Harris](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/), Apr 2, 2026
- Moment: 29:05 to 35:13 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-growth-could-become-disconnected-from-workers-livelihoods/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1745

## Quote

> “We are about to enter a world where GDP for countries comes more from **data centers and intelligence** and AI”
> — [Tristan Harris](https://realalpha.app/people/tristan-harris/) at [29:56](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1796) · Modern Wisdom

## Takeaways

1. AI could become a larger source of GDP than human labor.
2. Governments may have less incentive to invest in workers.
3. Displaced workers may also lose the income to buy goods.

## About this segment

Tristan Harris applies the resource-curse idea to AI: economies may rely on data centers and machine intelligence rather than human labor. That could weaken incentives to invest in people as jobs and incomes shrink.

From “AI Insider: “They’re Building Bunkers for a Reason” - Tristan Harris”, Apr 2, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[29:08](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1748) What do you mean anti-human? So let's dive into this. So there's something in economics called the resource curse. So think countries like Venezuela or Sudan, where you discover that that country is sitting on top of a really valuable resource like oil. And then once a bunch of your GDP comes from oil and not from the labor or innovation or development of your people. You invest more in oil infrastructure and not investing in people. You don't invest in education, you don't invest in healthcare, because oil is where you get your GDP and your growth from. Okay. This is a well-known fact in economics. It's called the resource curse. There's a wonderful guy named Luke Drago who wrote a piece called The Intelligence Curse.

[30:00](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1800) We are about to enter a world where GDP for countries comes more from data centers and intelligence and AI than is going to come from the labor of human beings. So everyone's talking about how AI is going to automate all these jobs and then we'll all just like sit back with universal basic income and become painters and poets. And is that actually what's going to happen? Or when countries get almost all of their revenue from AI and a smaller and smaller percentage from people, do they have an incentive to invest in child care, health care, education, the well-being of their people? Or is it basically just hook them up to the social media addiction economy, keep them busy while basically all the revenue comes from AI companies?

[30:46](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1846) And so what I'm trying to get at is this is not a human future. This is not a future that's in service of regular people. This is a future that's in service of eight soon-to-be trillionaires who will consolidate all the wealth and disempower basically everybody else. Because... Does that make sense? It does. Because previously, in order to... Can I get that in? It's high-powered stuff. And yeah, this is a big conversation.

[31:12](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1872) Yeah, exactly. They've started a fucking trend. It's so funny when no one in the room wants to crack their can in case it interrupts the conversation. So one goes and it's a Mexican wave of can opens around the... It's good. So previously, you would have had to look after the humans, healthcare, education, quality of life. Also, tax revenue comes from people, right? Well, you would have to look after them because they were the primary economic engine.

[31:39](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1899) That's right. And so, they feed themselves. Yes. Economically, they feed themselves. Exactly. People that are young help to support the people that are old. That's right. The ones that are entering the workforce and are driving innovation and are working 40, 60-hour weeks, double jobs, all the rest of it. Then there's old people who've got 401ks and pensions and shit like that. Your position is that if we have a world where the human part of the contribution to economic growth and GDP is removed, because it is humans consuming AI, but AI driving and data centers driving the revenue itself, beyond building the data centers, there's very little, and I imagine much of that's done by robots in any case. Well, we have this joke that most people's occupation in the future we're headed towards with AI is to become a coffin builder.

[32:30](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1950) In other words, your job is to create the thing that replaces you and obsoletes you. So you are essentially building the coffin for your future obsolescence. And so if you're short-term, yes, we need the electricians and the plumbers and we're building data centers. Short-term, yes, you can be a programmer and get the benefit from vibe coding. But then the AIs are learning on all the things that you're doing. And it's taking all the training data, what you're doing with AI, and it's using that to train an AI that can take your job.

[32:56](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=1976) So everybody using AI now to help them is also training the future AIs that will completely replace them. And again, the explicit goal, this is not my opinion. This is literally the mission statement of all of the AI companies because the multi-trillion dollar prize at the end of the rainbow of owning the entire world economy is based on building this full replacement economy because that's what will achieve the greatest growth.

[33:20](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=2000) And that's why these companies- Replacement economy? Yeah, meaning that they're designing to replace all human labor. They're not designed to augment and support and enhance human labor. They're designing to replace all human labor because that's what justifies the amount of money that they've taken on in debt that they can grow into this total ownership of the entire economy. What else is there to say about the intelligence curse?

[33:44](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=2024) Well, it's just important for people to get that when the AIs are doing all the new scientific research, not humans. You have an automated chemistry lab, you have an automated biology lab, you have an automated surgery. When AI is doing all of that, again, the revenue is going to come from AI, not from people. And what that means is all the wealth will go to a handful of five AI companies. And then how are you going to be able to make a living? When in history has a small group of people ever consolidated all the wealth and consciously redistributed it to everyone else and if you think that might happen in the u.s we'll do a universal basic income just think about the entire world so right now you have ais that are automating say customer service jobs so let's say that that disrupts like you know the philippines where like 90 of the economy is

[34:31](https://realalpha.app/v/NufB1LL_rCU/?t=2071) customer service i don't know the number is it's high what happens when an entire country's economy gets disrupted by ai are a handful of us ai companies going to pay out and support the well-being and the livelihoods of all these other people like and then if people don't have money how are they going to buy the goods in this future economy where it's all generated by ai because now you don't even have an income so this you know essentially we're on track to break entire economy. This is not in the interests of countries. What's confusing to me about this is that I believe it only took something like 20% unemployment for a couple of years to lead to the