# Falling Prices Decide Whether AI Creates Markets or Replaces Workers by Richard Socher > AI’s effect on employment depends on what happens to demand when prices collapse. The world does not need billions of additional illustrations, but it can use billions of personalized software products. Where demand expands, AI creates new value; where it saturates, labor is displaced. > **— Adapted from Richard Socher**, *MOONSHOTS Live, October 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Recording or publication:** [MOONSHOTS Live at 2:09:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blyb1D927pM&t=7758s) — The poster text is an explicit non-verbatim adaptation assembled from the source excerpts below. It preserves the speaker's argument while removing spoken-language filler, restoring the subject, and completing the mechanism or consequence needed for independent use. - **Exact transcript excerpt at [2:09:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blyb1D927pM&t=7758s):** “All right. Well, uh, let me try to scan them really quick. Um, all right, "If AI makes companies 10X more productive but we don't need 10X the output, where does the value go? Shareholders, workers, or does it evaporate?" I think this is actually something I have thought about in the past. Uh, I think we can predict the impact of jobs, uh, in a certain industry from AI based on the elasticity of the demand when the price of that product goes massively down. We don't need to have billions and billions of illustrations in the world, and so when AI made the price of one illustration go down from 200 bucks to, like, two cents or less, like, we just didn't need as many illustrators anymore, um, uh, eh, because the demand for illustrations didn't go massively up. Yes, every little blog post and every little tweet can now have beautiful visualization and, and illustration, uh, but, uh, you know, we didn't need many more billions of them. Uh, I think software is a different one. You can actually have, everyone can have several pieces of software just specific to them. So we can actually have billions of different software products, uh, customized for each person, uh, and so the demand, uh, for that product will go up. Jevons paradox is gonna be alive, uh, in that world a- and we're going to see more and more demand, and there will be, uh, more, uh, value accruing to everyone. I think in terms of shareholders versus workers, I think the wave of AI, in the best scenario, will be a huge force for more entrepreneurship and, in the worst case scenario, a force of more inequality. I think, uh, everyone who owns some equity in a company that uses AI can love AI.” - **Reconciled source dossier:** [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] — preserves broadcast order, speaker reconciliation, editorial conventions, and the surrounding argument from which this Reminder was promoted. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/Vertically Integrating an AI Superpower from AI Factory to Citizen|Vertically Integrating an AI Superpower]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Gigawatt Is the New Measure of War|The Gigawatt Is the New Measure of War]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Richard Socher|Richard Socher]] - [[wiki/AI Labor Substitution|AI Labor Substitution]] - [[wiki/Jevons Paradox|Jevons Paradox]] ## Share on Social Media ``` AI’s effect on employment depends on what happens to demand when prices collapse. The world does not need billions of additional illustrations, but it can use billions of personalized software products. Where demand expands, AI creates new value; where it saturates, labor is displaced. — Adapted from Richard Socher, MOONSHOTS Live, October 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-richard-socher-falling-prices-decide-whether-ai-creates-markets-or-replaces-workers ```