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Comment by ninninninnin | Hacker News Reader

I think you are thinking this is all there is. There is more. Yes current tasks are automatable. But what about future tasks? When we don't need to write code what can we do with our brains instead?? What can we learn about biology/chemistry/physics/engineering that we don't know now.

The same thing happened in the industrial revolution... This might be different than that but freeing up resources from menial tasks means we can work at a higher level.

AI might be able to do that too, and there will be a period of adjustment, but we as a whole need to change a and move forward together. Not just tech bros. Government and industry will also need to change to help society... Else we will have collapse.

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> But what about future tasks?

There wont be as many. The previous automation waves since the late 1800s have optimized or automated away a lot of tasks humans used to do, while what human beings do and need have not increased at the same pace. Today, we arent using flying cars or cyberpunk technologies that require a whole industry chain in which millions of people can participate, like how it was depicted in sci fi movies for example. Whatever scarce new thing that came to being, was consolidated in the hands of megacorps and automated to max extent to reduce workforce. Since the 1970s we automated away almost all the workforce in factories - what used to require ~2000-3000 people in a factory to produce now requires ~100 people using extremely efficient automated systems. Only white collar work remained, and now the AI is automating away the white collars too, who were the last remaining holdout that helped infuse the economy with cash through their salaries.

Blackrock CEO's surprising speech at Davos is spot on and what Marx said 150 years ago. It just happened, in front of our eyes, in our lifetime: Capitalism literally choked itself by automating production, firing workers and ending up with an economy that has products, but no one with the money to buy them.

Got a link to the speech?

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHnSmuCxOao&t=5m3s

As for text, Fink's LI account published his own remarks on 2026-01-19 (no login required; also, not a video nor a verbatim transcript, but rather a similar outline) at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-remarks-interim-co-chair-w...

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