AI efficiency gains don’t benefit employees, they benefit _employers_, who get more output from the same salary.
When you’re salaried, you’re selling 8 hours of time, not units of work. AI that makes you 20% faster doesn’t mean you work 20% fewer hours or get a 20% raise. It means your employer gets 20% more value from the same labor cost.
Marx: workers sell their capacity to work for a fixed period, and any productivity improvements within that time become surplus value captured by capital.
AI tools are just the latest mechanism for extracting more output from the same wage.
The real issue isn’t the technology—it’s that employees can’t capture gains from their own efficiency improvements. Until compensation models shift from time-based to outcome-based, every productivity breakthrough just makes us more profitable to employ, not more prosperous ourselves.
It’s the Industrial Revolution all over again and we’re the Luddites
Marx: workers sell their capacity to work for a fixed period, and any productivity improvements within that time become surplus value captured by capital.
AI tools are just the latest mechanism for extracting more output from the same wage. The real issue isn’t the technology—it’s that employees can’t capture gains from their own efficiency improvements. Until compensation models shift from time-based to outcome-based, every productivity breakthrough just makes us more profitable to employ, not more prosperous ourselves.
It’s the Industrial Revolution all over again and we’re the Luddites