I never understood this take. It strikes me more as "faith in our lord and savior AI" without actual evidence to support this.
Do you expect that to change, and if so, how?
The short answer: 1) Veto power vested in too many NIMBYs, in various flavors; and 2) Wall Street is rewarded on — and therefore chases — short-term results that goose the stock price.
America remains a massive manufacturer. China is bigger. But they’re approaching the same demographic constraints we did.
That, and the American economy's pernicious habit for making money doing nothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization
When will that become problematic, you tell me...
> During the 18th century, the location served as a slave market and securities trading site... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street
kind of illustrates that.
How many years off is your pension, perchance? If you still think "technology" is going to bankroll your retirement, you've got more faith than I do.
But a primary problem is financial. There is too much financial wealth that is desperately looking to find lucrative opportunities which do not exist. So everybody follows the hype and creates the largest bubble we have seen in human history. And those who don't invest in AI, are largely bound in private equity or real estate, which extracts wealth from everybody without giving anything in return. This makes all other businesses less competitive.
It's a huge bottom-up scheme because the incentives are wrong, lacking transparency and unchecked financial power. This is simply not sustainable and nothing but a systemic change is needed.
In the lie for search of productivity, the west didn't become more efficient. We simply outsourced lower-margin industries to Asia and we are now faced with: Lost knowledge, lacking infrastructure, vulnerable supply chains and people without jobs.
AI cannot and will not change this.
Edit: Not sure why you got downvotes, I think it is a valid question.
"largest bubble we have seen in human history" - the sums involved are not the largest - the railway bubble was larger as percent of GDP. Also it's not even clear it is that much of a bubble - the AI may come through and produce more value than the sums invested. If you can double the workforce by matching humans with AI/robots how much is that worth?