The Dead Economy Theory

“死亡经济”理论

You’re probably familiar with the dead internet theory: most of what you encounter online is now generated by bots, for bots, with humans reduced to a shrinking audience for machine-generated noise. Last year, over half of new content on the internet was AI-generated. The humans are still there, scrolling, but the thing they’re scrolling through has become a performance staged by machines for an audience that hasn’t yet realized the show isn’t for them.

你可能听说过“死亡互联网”理论：你在网上遇到的大部分内容现在都是由机器人生成，并服务于机器人的；人类已沦为机器生成噪音的受众，且规模正在不断萎缩。去年，互联网上超过一半的新内容是由人工智能生成的。人类依然在那里刷着屏幕，但他们所浏览的内容，已经变成了一场由机器为观众精心编排的表演，而观众们甚至还没意识到，这场戏根本不是演给他们看的。

It’s utterly desiccating to log onto spaces seeking a live mind to joust and think with, and find a relentless stream of slop. Promised an age of superconnectivity, we’ve let our shared physical spaces wither, only to find our promised digital commons to be one large billboard increasingly read and created by bots.

当你满怀期待地登录社交空间，试图寻找一个鲜活的灵魂进行交流与思考，却只发现源源不断的垃圾信息时，那种感觉令人极度枯竭。我们曾被许诺进入一个超连接时代，结果却任由共享的物理空间荒废，最终发现我们所期待的数字公地，竟变成了一块巨大的广告牌，且正越来越多地被机器人阅读和创作。

That’s bad enough. I want to talk about something worse. Call it the dead economy theory.

这已经够糟糕了。我想谈谈更严重的事情。我们可以称之为“死亡经济”理论。

The AI industry has a numbers problem. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Microsoft: the combined investment in large-scale AI infrastructure now runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars, with projections into the trillions over the next decade. OpenAI alone has been valued at north of $800 billion. Anthropic, which has yet to produce a single year of profit, commands a valuation in the same stratosphere. These numbers need an addressable market large enough to justify them.

人工智能行业面临着数字上的困境。OpenAI、Anthropic、Google DeepMind、Meta AI 和微软：在大型人工智能基础设施上的总投资现已达到数千亿美元，预计未来十年将达到数万亿美元。仅 OpenAI 的估值就已超过 8000 亿美元。至今尚未实现一年盈利的 Anthropic，其估值也处于同样的云端水平。这些数字需要一个足够庞大的目标市场来支撑。

There is only one market that large: the global labor market.

只有一个市场有如此规模：全球劳动力市场。

As we’re getting excited about discovering how to use claude.md files in Cowork, the industry is pitching a different reality. Every investor presentation of an AI agent “doing the work of ten analysts” is telling you the same thing: the product is labor replacement. The gentler language (”copilot,” “assistant,” “augmentation”) is marketing. The financial model underneath requires the elimination of human cost centers at civilizational scale. If it doesn’t do that, these companies are the most overvalued assets in the history of capitalism.

当我们还在为如何使用 Cowork 中的 claude.md 文件而兴奋时，行业正在兜售另一种现实。每一份关于人工智能代理“能完成十个分析师工作”的投资者演示文稿，都在传达同一个信息：该产品旨在取代劳动力。那些温和的措辞（如“副驾驶”、“助手”、“增强”）不过是营销手段。其底层的财务模型要求在文明尺度上消除人类成本中心。如果做不到这一点，这些公司就是资本主义历史上估值最高的泡沫资产。

The AI companies now construct their own benchmarks to prove the point. OpenAI’s GDPVal benchmark measures how well models perform across forty-four occupations, from real estate broker to news analyst. The AI Productivity Index evaluates models against four specific professional roles: investment banking associate, management consultant, Big Law associate, primary care physician. These are targeting reticles aimed at the professional class.

人工智能公司现在构建了自己的基准测试来证明这一点。OpenAI 的 GDPVal 基准测试衡量模型在 44 种职业中的表现，从房地产经纪人到新闻分析师不等。人工智能生产力指数则针对四个特定的专业角色评估模型：投资银行助理、管理顾问、大型律所律师和初级保健医生。这些测试的准星，正瞄准着专业人士阶层。

So let’s take them at their word. Assume the technology works as advertised, that AI systems become capable of performing most cognitive labor at a fraction of the cost of human workers. What happens next? Follow the money through three turns.

那么，让我们相信他们的话。假设技术如宣传的那样有效，人工智能系统能够以人类劳动力成本的一小部分完成大部分认知劳动。接下来会发生什么？让我们通过三个阶段来追踪资金的流向。

Turn one: a company licenses AI to replace a significant portion of its workforce. Costs drop. Margins expand. The stock price goes up. Everyone on the earnings call is happy. When Block’s Jack Dorsey laid off nearly half his workforce in March, citing AI coding agents, investors responded with a twenty-five percent stock price surge in after-hours trading. The market rewarded the elimination of human labor with an immediate, massive transfer of value to shareholders.

第一阶段：一家公司通过授权使用人工智能来取代其大部分员工。成本下降，利润率扩大，股价上涨。财报电话会议上的每个人都很高兴。当 Block 公司的杰克·多西（Jack Dorsey）在三月份以人工智能编码代理为由裁掉近一半员工时，投资者以盘后交易中股价飙升 25% 作为回应。市场通过将价值大规模、即时地转移给股东，来奖励这种对人类劳动力的剔除。

Turn two: the replaced workers stop earning income. They cut spending. The businesses they used to patronize see revenue decline. Some of those businesses also adopt AI to cut costs, compounding the displacement. Consumer demand contracts across the economy.

第二阶段：被取代的工人失去了收入，他们削减开支。他们曾经光顾的企业收入下降。其中一些企业也开始采用人工智能来削减成本，从而加剧了失业。整个经济体的消费需求随之萎缩。

Turn three: the company that fired its workers to save money discovers that its customers were, in aggregate, other companies’ workers. Revenue growth stalls. The AI subscription that was supposed to be an investment in efficiency turns out to be a contribution to the destruction of its own market.

第三阶段：当初为了省钱而裁员的公司发现，其客户群体本质上就是其他公司的员工。收入增长停滞。原本被视为效率投资的人工智能订阅服务，最终却成了摧毁自身市场的推手。