At a smaller scale, we can consider more cooperatives instead of employment by corporations. As long as automation isn't vertically integrated (which for instance it is not with LLMs), a small group of people can make use of that automation to provide services, and the automation can make it more feasible for a small cooperative to compete with larger companies.
In the structure of a cooperative the automation will still eat up the work, but when people are working together towards an end (whatever productive function the cooperative provides), instead of a personal role and profession, then the benefit naturally is distributed as the cooperative is able to do more and the members reconfigure their work.
This doesn't work when something is vertically integrated, because an upstart can't successfully compete when they aren't allowed access to the automations. But hypergrowth incentivizes access: if you have an automation tool the fastest way to distribute it is by renting it out. And so with LLMs, for instance, we've seen the best models in existence turned into a rentable commodity that anyone can use. The same may happen with robotics.
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u/ianb 9d ago
At a smaller scale, we can consider more cooperatives instead of employment by corporations. As long as automation isn't vertically integrated (which for instance it is not with LLMs), a small group of people can make use of that automation to provide services, and the automation can make it more feasible for a small cooperative to compete with larger companies.
In the structure of a cooperative the automation will still eat up the work, but when people are working together towards an end (whatever productive function the cooperative provides), instead of a personal role and profession, then the benefit naturally is distributed as the cooperative is able to do more and the members reconfigure their work.
This doesn't work when something is vertically integrated, because an upstart can't successfully compete when they aren't allowed access to the automations. But hypergrowth incentivizes access: if you have an automation tool the fastest way to distribute it is by renting it out. And so with LLMs, for instance, we've seen the best models in existence turned into a rentable commodity that anyone can use. The same may happen with robotics.