Philip Trammell
Economist at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute; works on what advanced AI would do to growth, saving and the long-run economy.
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Korrents What they believe 15 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
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Nothing has yet been completely automated: look down the supply chain behind any machine and labour is still adding a great deal of the value.
there's a sense in which nothing's yet been completely automated. If you look at the network-adjusted factor shares of a good, which is to say you look down the supply chain and say not just like the final step, but how much of that is done by capital and labor, but what went into the machines that can automate that final step. You'll find that labor's adding a lot of value down the supply chain.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
Some goods really will get a fully automated supply chain, and yet what that does to the overall capital share is genuinely ambiguous.
I do think there's this qualitative shift that we I think we agree is coming, which is that there will be at least some goods whose network-adjusted capital share goes to one, right? Because the whole supply chain can be automated and there's no part in it that we care intrinsically about having a human do. Um, so that'll be a, you know, that'll be a qualitative shift. Interestingly, the implications of that shift for the overall capital share are ambiguous
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
Automating everything except the ballerina need not raise labour's share, because the marginal value of the automated stuff falls faster than its quantity rises.
then the quantity of everything that's not a ballerina, say, goes to infinity, but our the marginal utility in that stuff goes to zero faster than the quantity is rising.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
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The share of income spent on things only a human can do will stay negligible, because new things to buy keep being invented faster than we satiate on the old ones.
but of course, that's not what's happened, because as we've accumulated more wealth and you know, more advanced machines and and so on, we've expanded the range of things other than singers to spend our money on, and the share spent on singers has stayed sort of negligible. Um so likewise, that's sort of my central prediction about how future unfolds, though I it could go either way.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
The rules that keep judges, juries and licensed professionals human are transitional, not permanent.
all of these frictions on um the political type decisions that we are accustomed to only trusting human you know, only having humans for like legislation and being a judge, being a jury or all the licensing thing that keeps certain professions human that all strikes me as transitional, right?
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
Whoever fails to satiate in capital rationally saves more, and therefore ends up holding most of the wealth in the long run.
Then the person who doesn't satiate in capital is going to have if they're being rational they're going to have a higher savings rate.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
The capital stock can grow quickly while the capital share falls, because the price of capital goods relative to consumption goods can drop faster still.
the capital stock could grow quickly, but the price of capital goods relative to consumption goods could be falling faster than the capital stock is growing.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
Most macroeconomic models cannot describe the AI transition, because they assume a single output that converts one-for-one into capital or consumption.
here prices are adjusting in this interesting way that too many macro models don't allow for, right? So, that what what a what's happening is what would be called investment specific technical change where yeah, the price of capital is like falling relative to the price of consumption instead of like the standard doing the standard macro thing of saying there's just output.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
There is no single interest rate in a world of rapidly cheapening robots: measured in robots it might be ten thousand per cent.
It might be that every robot now can turn into, you know, 100 robots next year, right? So, in units of robots the interest rate is 10,000%.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
There is an unsatiating reason to want wealth that has nothing to do with greed: a classical utilitarian wants resources in order to create new happy beings.
when I think about why it might be good to have a lot of wealth in the future as a good classical utilitarian, to me, the value is or at least one way you could have a kind of almost unsatiating uh utility function in in having wealth in the future is to create new happy beings, right? They just add to the total welfare of the world.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
Even with no redistribution at all, a little saving would rescue a great many people, because the same AI that automates the work makes returns enormous.
things have to go really wrong for us to like just get over the threshold of uh you know, capital being productive enough to automate lots of work, but not be productive enough that that the interest rate is high and or the price of capital produced goods is falling a lot, okay? So, even without redistribution, a little bit of savings will save a lot of people.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
A poor country should prioritise owning a piece of AI over retraining its workers, but it should not bet everything on that.
I would prioritize trying to index, but just given how fast AI could, you know, hit the world. But, um I definitely wouldn't just rely on that because like it could the the sort of um messy middle type cases or the just a long timelines cases on which like you we don't get it anything like AGI all that soon.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
The worry that AI's returns are locked away in private companies is overstated: well under a fifth of American market capitalisation is private.
it's already not that hard to index. So it's not There's been a bit of an increase in the privatization of returns but it's still like you know well under 20% of the total market cap of um non-non-tiny companies in in the US is is a private.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
The long trend of making it easier for ordinary people to index more of the economy will resume, and AI itself will help by cutting the cost of going public.
if I had to guess I would guess that the kind of long kind of general trend of just like lowering those frictions and making it easier for more and more people to index more and more will continue despite the recent bump in the other direction.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
There is far less trade-off than people assume between a safer AI race and widely shared gains: a big lead can be held by a widely owned public company.
some people think either uh frontier AI gets commoditized and we all enjoy the benefits, but there might be some risk because like it's the market's really competitive and cutthroat, or um things are safer because there's a big gap between the leader and the laggard, but that means that the leaders get fantastically wealthy. No, like you could just have a relatively big gap, but it's a public company ownership and it's widely distributed.
The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell Said 4 Jun 2026
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