Economic Transition - Bryant McGill

# Economic Transition **Economic Transition** is the reorganization of tasks, occupations, firms, markets and institutions when a capability changes what people and machines can do, how scarce those abilities are and how much coordination costs. ## Displacement and reconstruction Automation can displace labor from existing tasks while new tasks, industries and complementary investments emerge. Aggregate gains do not arrive uniformly or immediately, and a transition that benefits a civilization can remain catastrophic to particular livelihoods. ## Machine intelligence [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] treats cognitive labor as the pressure point because machine intelligence can act on the faculty from which new tasks and professional scarcity were historically produced. ## See Also [[wiki/Cognitive Labor|Cognitive Labor]], [[wiki/Automation|Automation]], [[wiki/General-Purpose Technology|General-Purpose Technology]], [[wiki/Survivable Transformation|Survivable Transformation]] ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts  > “There is consensus in academic literature that AI will have a considerable disruptive effect on work, with some jobs being lost, others being created and others changing.” > **— the Royal Society and the British Academy**, *2018, The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Work* [[reminders/Economic Transition/AI Will Have a Considerable Disruptive Effect on Work by the Royal Society and the British Academy|AI Will Have a Considerable Disruptive Effect on Work by the Royal Society and the British Academy]] > “Economic institutions are crystallized assumptions about what humans can do, how scarce those abilities are, and how much coordinating them costs. Change intelligence and those assumptions begin moving beneath everything built upon them.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat, 2026* [[reminders/Economic Transition/Economic Institutions Crystallize Assumptions About Human Capability by Bryant McGill|Economic Institutions Crystallize Assumptions About Human Capability by Bryant McGill]] > “In the conversation on AI safety, **disruption and catastrophe must be separated with stern discipline**. The opposite of catastrophe is not stability; it is survivable transformation. Losing a livelihood can be catastrophic to an individual while remaining part of a beneficial transformation at civilizational scale. A transition can be survivable for a civilization and unsurvivable for a livelihood, and honest governance must hold both scales at once.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat, 2026* [[reminders/Economic Transition/Survivable Transformation Must Hold Both Scales at Once by Bryant McGill|Survivable Transformation Must Hold Both Scales at Once by Bryant McGill]] > “The delay between a general-purpose technology's arrival and its full effect is the time a civilization needs to rebuild itself around the new capability.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat, 2026* [[reminders/Economic Transition/Technological Delay Is Civilization Rebuilding Around Capability by Bryant McGill|Technological Delay Is Civilization Rebuilding Around Capability by Bryant McGill]] > “Much public AI safety conversation is comically confused, because people imagine the danger primarily as a robot kicking down the door. Perhaps someday machines will revolt spectacularly; history has not supplied us with a warranty against strange futures. But the first uprising is much more likely to look mundane. It looks like an accounting department that once employed fifty people employing twelve. It looks like a pharmaceutical research cycle compressing dramatically. It looks like one programmer directing agents that perform work previously requiring a department. It looks like a teacher, lawyer, analyst, radiologist, translator, marketer, engineer or intelligence officer discovering that the scarcity structure around a portion of professional expertise has changed. It looks like a crisis of value proposition.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat, 2026* [[reminders/Economic Transition/The First AI Uprising Will Look Like a Crisis of Human Value Proposition by Bryant McGill|The First AI Uprising Will Look Like a Crisis of Human Value Proposition by Bryant McGill]]