If AI Leads Us to Abundance, Why Are We Racing So Hard?
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about where all of this AI development is taking us.
There seems to be a growing belief that increasingly capable AI could eventually lead us toward a world of abundance—a world where AI and automation make many things cheaper, easier to access, and available to more people. And honestly, I find that idea exciting. But at the same time, I keep coming back to a question:
If abundance really is where we're going, why are we racing so hard to get there first?
I'm not against AI. Quite the opposite. I think the potential is extraordinary. What concerns me is the journey between where we are today and whatever that abundant future might look like.
I don't need to be a millionaire
Maybe this is just me, but I've realized that I don't actually need extraordinary wealth to be happy. I'm pretty content with my life. What I really want is simple: to live peacefully, have enough, and not have someone constantly bothering me or making my life unnecessarily difficult. That's enough for me.
So when I hear people talking about a future where AI could make everyone a millionaire, I sometimes wonder whether that's really the best way to think about the future. If we genuinely enter an era of abundance, what does being a millionaire even mean?
Today, $1 million can mean a great deal because many things are scarce. Housing is expensive. Healthcare can be expensive. Education can be expensive. Time is scarce. Many essential services require a lot of human labor.
But imagine a future where AI and robotics make many of these things extraordinarily cheap and plentiful.
Maybe the important question isn't: “How much money will I have?”
Maybe it's: “Will I have enough to live a good life?”
If the answer is yes, that's already a pretty wonderful future. I don't need to have more than everyone else. If there is genuinely enough for everyone, I'd be perfectly happy knowing that other people have enough too.
But there's an important problem. We're not in that world yet.
We're talking about abundance while still living with scarcity
This is where I think things get complicated. We're talking about abundance as the possible destination, but we're still living in a world where many things are scarce.
And scarcity creates competition. If one company believes another company is about to develop a much more powerful AI, there is an obvious temptation to move faster. If one country believes another country might gain a major technological advantage, it has an incentive to move faster too. And if you're an individual who believes that whoever gets there first could gain enormous wealth and power, you might understandably want to make sure you're one of those people.
From an individual perspective, all of this makes sense. But collectively, I wonder whether it can create a problem. What is rational for one person, one company, or one country might not necessarily be good for everyone when everyone does it at the same time.
In other words, we may be trying to build a world with less scarcity using incentives that were created for a world defined by scarcity. And that seems like an important thing to think about.
The race itself could become the risk
When people say AI could be risky, I don't necessarily think we need to imagine some dramatic science-fiction scenario.
Risk can be much more ordinary. Imagine two companies racing to develop increasingly capable AI.
Company A thinks: “If we slow down to do more testing, Company B will beat us.”
Company B thinks the same thing.
So neither wants to slow down.
Eventually, everyone is moving faster partly because everyone is afraid that someone else will move faster.
Nobody necessarily wants things to become unsafe. Nobody has to be acting maliciously. The problem can come from the competition itself.
That's what concerns me. Not AI itself. Not technological progress. Not even the idea of developing increasingly capable systems. It's the possibility that our race toward a potentially extraordinary future could undermine our ability to actually reach that future.
But will AI really create abundance?
Of course, there's another question we should be honest about. We don't actually know that AI will create abundance. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. And even if AI dramatically increases how much society can produce, that doesn't automatically mean everyone will benefit equally.
Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are still questions about who owns it, who controls it, who gets access to it, how governments respond, how economies change, and how the benefits are distributed. We could theoretically have incredibly powerful technology and still have people struggling to afford basic necessities.
So when I talk about abundance, I don't mean simply that AI will allow us to produce more things. I mean something more meaningful:
A future where that increased ability to produce actually translates into a better life for ordinary people.
That's a much bigger challenge.
Some people say, “AI is dangerous”
Personally, I'd rather use the word risky. Almost every major human undertaking involves risk.
We build airplanes. We develop medicines. We construct enormous infrastructure. We operate financial systems. We developed nuclear technology.
The answer isn't necessarily to stop doing these things. The answer is to understand the risks and manage them responsibly. Test things. Do the due diligence. Build safeguards. Monitor what happens. Learn from mistakes. Regulate where regulation is necessary. And change course when we discover that something isn't working.
That's how I think we should approach AI. I'm not saying we should stop. I'm saying we should be responsible about how we move forward.
If we're going to regulate AI, explain why
When I first heard people saying, “We need to regulate AI now because it could be dangerous,” part of me wondered: Okay, but dangerous how?
I don't think I'm the only ordinary person who has had that reaction. When a message is simply “AI is dangerous,” it's not always clear what we're supposed to do with that information. Are we supposed to be afraid? Concerned? Support regulation? Stop using AI? And what exactly are we supposed to be concerned about? When the risks are described in very broad or abstract terms, I think it's easy for ordinary people to become confused or passive rather than engaged.
And then something strange can happen. People advocating for greater AI safety or regulation may look at the public's lack of reaction and think, “Why is everyone so complacent? Why doesn't anyone seem to care?”
But maybe people aren't complacent. Maybe they just don't understand what they're supposed to be worried about. If we're going to ask society to take something seriously—or ask governments to put rules around it—we should explain what we're actually trying to prevent. What is the risk? How could it happen? How serious could it be? And what are we actually proposing to do about it?
Those are questions ordinary people can understand. And once people understand the problem, they're in a much better position to decide how they feel about it and what should be done. I think that's important because fear alone doesn't necessarily make people pay attention. Understanding does.
I'm not opposed to regulation simply because AI is powerful. For me, if something has enormous potential to change society, it seems reasonable to think carefully about how we develop and deploy it. But if we want ordinary people to take these risks seriously, we shouldn't be surprised when vague warnings fail to move them. People can't meaningfully respond to a risk they don't understand.
Ordinary people aren't powerless—but this isn't easy for us
I don't want to pretend that ordinary people can simply solve all of this themselves. Yes, we can vote. We can educate ourselves. We can speak up. We can support people and institutions that we believe are acting responsibly. Those things matter.
But we also have to acknowledge that a huge amount of power and resources are concentrated in the hands of relatively few companies, governments, and institutions. The people making some of the most consequential decisions about AI aren't necessarily ordinary people like me.
So even if millions of ordinary people are trying to be thoughtful and responsible, there are still enormous economic, political, and geopolitical forces at work. That’s why I think the transition is probably going to be bumpy.
I don't expect everyone to agree. I don't expect every politician to understand the technology perfectly. I don't expect every company to put society ahead of its own interests. And I certainly don't expect every prediction about AI to turn out to be correct.
What I hope for is something more basic: I hope our institutions remain strong enough and flexible enough to keep society reasonably stable while we figure this out.
The destination matters—but so does the journey
Here's the strange thing I've realized: If AI really does eventually produce extraordinary abundance, then a lot of today's competition might become less meaningful.
If everyone has enough, I don't need to have more. If everyone has access to incredible education, I don't need to personally own the best school. If everyone has access to extraordinary healthcare, I don't need to control the healthcare system. If technology makes most material necessities abundant, perhaps the obsession with accumulating more and more starts to lose some of its meaning.
Maybe the real success of AI isn't making some people unimaginably rich. Maybe it's making it possible for more people to live well without needing to be rich. To me, that's a much more interesting definition of abundance.
But we're not there yet. We're still crossing a bridge. And that's why I keep coming back to this thought:
The goal shouldn't be to get there first. The goal should be to get there safely.
Because if we're so focused on winning the race that we damage the bridge we're all crossing, we could end up undermining the very future we're trying to create.
Maybe we don't need to choose between optimism and caution
I don't think we have to be either an AI optimist or an AI pessimist. I can believe that AI might eventually create extraordinary abundance and, at the same time, believe that we should take the risks seriously. If you believe this technology could transform civilization for the better, shouldn't you want to make sure we don't handle it recklessly? That's not fear. That's responsibility.
And responsible development doesn't mean eliminating every possible risk. That's impossible. It means recognizing that something this powerful deserves serious thought, serious testing, reasonable safeguards, thoughtful governance, and an honest public conversation about what we're actually trying to achieve.
What I hope for
Ultimately, I'm not dreaming about becoming extraordinarily wealthy because of AI. I'm not particularly interested in winning some technological race. I just want to live peacefully. I want enough. And if AI really does lead humanity toward an age of abundance, I'd be happy if everyone else had enough too.
We're talking about technology that could potentially give humanity more productive capacity than we've ever had before. And yet, during the transition, we may find ourselves fighting harder than ever over who gets there first. That's the paradox I keep thinking about.
We may be trying to build a world beyond scarcity while using a system of competition shaped by scarcity.
Perhaps the real challenge isn't whether AI can create abundance. Perhaps it's whether we can manage ourselves well enough to reach that abundance together. I don't know if we can.
I don't expect the ride to be smooth. There will probably be disagreements, mistakes, political fights, economic disruption, uncertainty, and perhaps periods that are genuinely frightening.
But I hope we keep the vehicle on the road. Because if abundance really is the destination, I'd rather arrive there safely than arrive there first.
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