工程师 Venkatesh Rao：AI 精英可能像重商主义者囤积黄金一样囤积智能
AI elites might hoard intelligence like mercantilists hoarded gold
工程师 Venkatesh Rao 在博客文章中将 AI 恐惧比作重商主义，认为许多精英把智能视为应由专家管理、维持高价并限制对手获取的稀缺资源。他提出 AI 可能让人思考更多而非更少，因为原本太难或成本过高的项目变得可行，对创意的需求会增长。政治焦点应是公平获取 AI，而非保护传统知识岗位。
Nov 2, 2026
If you only think about lost jobs when you think about AI, you're missing how much intelligence people will be able to use. That's the argument from engineer Venkatesh Rao in an essay on his tech blog "Contraptions." Rao compares AI fear to mercantilism, the economic doctrine that preceded capitalism. Mercantilists treated wealth like land and gold as finite, and ordinary people counted only as labor. Many elites now treat intelligence the same way, as a scarce, dangerous resource that experts should manage, keep expensive, and withhold from rivals. They see openly available AI models as a threat, and some AI executives exploit safety fears for political influence.
In early capitalism, people voluntarily worked 300 days a year instead of 250 to buy tea or sugar. AI could trigger something similar, Rao says. People might think more, not less, because AI makes projects feasible that were previously too hard or too costly. Demand for ideas would grow rather than making people obsolete. The political focus should be fair access to AI rather than protecting legacy knowledge jobs. Even AI agents could pursue their own projects and create new demand for intelligence, Rao argues. Autonomous AI needs guardrails, but it shouldn't just follow orders.
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