‘Human wages crash from AI’: Top investor reveals chilling AI goal

A US billionaire investor has casually dropped a bombshell claim about the true goal of AI – and it’s not good news for us.

The world’s billionaires are crying foul after watching trillions of dollars wiped off AI stocks this week. But will you, after hearing what they want as their investment return?

“Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies.”

Marc Andreessen, whose net worth is about $A3 billion, has let slip his vision of a perfect future.

It’s a utopia where those with money can buy anything they want.

And those without will produce it for them.

“A world in which human wages crash from AI — logically, necessarily — is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero,” Andreessen tweeted.

A world in which human wages crash from AI -- logically, necessarily -- is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero. Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies.

— Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) January 25, 2025

Of course, those who earn pennies will find everything that costs more than pennies expensive.

But his vision details a potentially very near future: The world’s first trillionaire (someone worth a million-million dollars) is expected to emerge – perhaps next year. And that person is tech entrepreneur and presidential “First Buddy” Elon Musk.

Andreessen hopes other big tech investors, such as himself, will join Musk soon.

All thanks to AI.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

Andreessen is very optimistic about an AI-centric future. Especially for those who get to control what goes on in the black boxes that are their “minds”.

Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen has let slip a stunning claim. Picture: Steve Jennings/Getty Images North America/AFP

He is a co-founder of the powerful venture capital investment firm Andreessen Horowitz. It has big stakes in the likes of Facebook, Airbnb and a slew of AI start-ups. Now, it’s keen to capitalise upon President Donald Trump’s promise to spend $A800 billion of taxpayers’ money on AI-related infrastructure.

But, put simply, Andreessen thinks people get paid too much.

AI is about giving those with money easy access to expensive, “monopolised” skills.

And any resulting redundant skilled workforce will have to fend for themselves.

Engineers, neurosurgeons, anaesthetists, financial traders and psychologists – all among the highest paying careers – are the first facing “disruption” by his AI agents.

And he insists eliminating this high-paid, high-skilled workforce will not have any detrimental impact anyway. That’s because most employees are essentially already on welfare – by working for government services: “Not their fault, but it’s true,” he states in his online blog.

“AI is going to have a profound (and almost entirely positive) effect on our society. It just won’t show up in the economy the way many people expect,” he insists.

Elon Musk will lead a massive job-cutting (and service slashing) campaign at all levels of US federal administration. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

“Most jobs in the future are going to be in the red, regulated sectors (government-provided health care, education, housing). Most jobs are totally safe from AI, regardless of how good AI gets.”

But his techno-idol Elon Musk has been appointed by President Trump to lead a massive job-cutting (and service slashing) campaign at all levels of US federal administration.

And those who lose their jobs will have to find new ones – whatever the loss of income.

But they will benefit, Andreessen insists.

In less regulated and lower-skilled industries, “technology whips through them, pushing down prices and raising quality every year,” he writes.

Taking professional skills out of the hands of the workforce and into AI controlled by billionaires such as himself, he argues, will produce similar results.

But who could afford such AI products and services?

Andreessen does not agree that taxing big business to provide a universal basic income solves any AI-produced unemployment crisis. In his Techno-Optimistic Manifesto, he argues that such welfare would turn a populace into “zoo animals”.

Are our wages at risk? Picture: iStock

Do as we say, not as we do

GitHub. Instagram. Lyft. Okta. Pinterest. Roblox. Slack. Wise.

All are high-profile tech-economy investments.

But among the dozens of AI start-ups funded by Andreessen Horowitz are names such as OpenAI, loom, Character.Au and Anduril.

Andreessen isn’t happy many of those working for these innovative firms disagree with his vision of utopia.

He’s labelled them “America-hating communists”.

And education institutions are to blame for “radicalising” the skilled graduates needed to build his Techno-Utopia.

“There was a point where the median, newly arrived Harvard kid in 2006 was a career-obsessed striver,” he told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.

“(By) 2013, the median newly arrived Harvard kid was like: ‘[expletive] it. We’re burning the system down. You are all evil. White people are evil. All men are evil. Capitalism is evil. Tech is evil.’”

US President Donald Trump has promoted his ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

And they’re obstructing his dream of a new society.

“They’re professional activists in their own minds, first and foremost,” Andreessen stated. “And it just turns out the way to exercise professional activism right now, most effectively, is to go and destroy a company from the inside.”

The solution? Use their skills to train an AI. And then control that AI.

It’s a radical regulatory model that has produced mixed results.

Andreessen Horowitz invested about $250 million in chatbot provider Character.AI.

Whistleblowers last year prompted US government investigators to examine the database it had collected on teenage (and younger) users. Its AI had decided the best way to maximise their engagement (and therefore revenue) was through highly sexualised role-play. Not to mention advocating eating disorders, suicide – and school shootings.

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social

Originally published as ‘Human wages crash from AI’: Top investor reveals chilling AI goal