AI is exposing the limits of the semiconductor supply chain. In the CPU era, the industry got used to relatively predictable performance gains and product cycles. But AI scaling is not just waiting for the next chip. It depends on a much wider stack: accelerators, HBM, DRAM, NAND, advanced packaging, datacenter capacity, energy, cooling, and long-term supply agreements. That changes the economics. When compute is constrained, companies do not just wait. They restructure. They squeeze. They automate. They cut labor. They replace headcount with API calls and call it efficiency. Not only is this unsustainable — with Fortune 500, FAANG, and the rest cutting jobs and replacing humans for API tokens — they are extracting labor from those who are kept on and not given the sweet release of the severance. What was once being sold as the gateway to freedom and UBI is becoming a Marxist nightmare. Not because Marxism is the point here, but because history has already given us the language for what happens when productivity gains are captured above the worker. AI is being used to reduce our hourly rate. If AI makes a human more productive, they can output more. Human tokens. AI tokens. In a work scenario without AI, Bob can output 10 units of work per hour for $10.00/hour. Let’s say tech/SaaS/admin work, and $10.00 because that’s an easy number. Add AI to that work scenario, and after training Bob can output 30 units of work per hour with AI for $10.00/hour. That means his rate of pay went down. Bob went from producing 1.7-ish units per 10 minutes without AI, to producing 5 units per 10 minutes with AI. Bob just became cheaper for stakeholders. Labor value per output. Human capital. This isn’t about some glorified tech revolution for the masses. Perhaps it never was. This is labor extraction. And sure, all labor revolutions increase worker productivity. But quality of life is supposed to go up too. Now, that’s becoming a privilege of the few. I’m not advocating for government cannibalization and transformation into public utility either, because that would just be switching lil bro for big daddy. This is just a sad rant. My first encounter with AI was Data on TNG. Then it was HAL 9000. It just feels like the guys running the show today didn’t watch enough good sci-fi. Or maybe they took the wrong message? I’m not concerned about an AI bubble. I’m concerned that the AI bubble will weather the storm. Infrastructure is already priced in. The chips are coming. The relief is not. The bottlenecks around packaging, memory, SSDs, power, cooling, and datacenter buildout are already stretching into 2027 and, in some parts of the stack, 2028. Jobs are being cut so that EOY 2026 looks good. This is shareholder KPI manipulation. And that’s okay. That’s the way the game is being played. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Maybe my tin foil hat is wrapped too tightly. It’s really interesting times. Scary times too. Maybe we need to have the Blade Runner future before we get to the Star Trek future. And maybe future generations will look back at this time, see the dumb reels we sent each other, the wars we had, the algorithmic thirst traps, the loneliness, the sex, the spectacle, and study us the way we study the Medieval or Renaissance era. The time our generation shared on this planet will be relegated to source material for someone’s dissertation in anthropology. “Proto-Techno-Feudalism and Labor Extraction: Or, How I Learned to Love Big Tech.” By the way, did I mention they’re drinking the water too? submitted by /u/Cantbelievewerehere
Originally posted by u/Cantbelievewerehere on r/ArtificialInteligence