The only thing we have to fear is fear itself: AI edition

July 16, 2026

This is a first in a series of general education articles of relevant topics that we think you may find of interest. If nothing else, this insight may help you look and sound more knowledgeable with your foursome at pickleball or at your local watering hole. 

Every major technological revolution begins with unease. Artificial intelligence is no different. To many people, AI feels less like another tool and more like a direct challenge to human value. It can write, code, summarize, translate, design, diagnose, and reason in ways that once seemed uniquely human. It raises understandable fears about job displacement, privacy, bias, misinformation, concentration of power, and the loss of control over systems that may become too complex for ordinary citizens to understand. These concerns should not be dismissed. A technology powerful enough to reshape work, education, medicine, finance, and national security deserves serious oversight. Yet fear alone is a poor guide to the future. History suggests that when a foundational resource becomes cheaper and more abundant, society does not become poorer. It becomes more capable.

The best way to understand AI is not as an isolated phenomenon, but as the latest example of a long economic pattern. Progress often comes from collapsing the cost of something essential. Food, electricity, and computing power are three of the clearest examples. Each began as scarce, expensive, and unevenly distributed. Each became cheaper through innovation. And each, once made broadly available, unlocked forms of prosperity that would have been impossible before.

For most of human history, food dominated human effort. A family’s survival depended on the ability to grow, harvest, store, and transport enough calories. In agricultural societies, most people worked on farms because they had to. Hunger was not an abstract problem. It was a permanent threat. Over time, mechanized farming, synthetic fertilizer, improved seeds, irrigation, refrigeration, global trade, and modern logistics transformed that reality. Food did not become free, and food insecurity still exists, but the long-term trend is unmistakable. Far fewer people can now produce far more food. In the United States, the share of disposable income spent on food has fallen dramatically over the past century, including from about 17 percent in 1960 to under 10 percent by 2019. This decline matters because money and labor not spent merely surviving can be redirected toward education, healthcare, entrepreneurship, science, art, and leisure. Cheap food did not make society less valuable. It freed human beings to do more valuable things.

Electricity followed a similar path. In the early twentieth century, reliable electric power was a luxury. Over time, power plants, transmission grids, household wiring, and better generation technologies made electricity a basic utility. Its greatest effect was not simply that people could turn on lights. Cheap electricity multiplied human capability. It powered factories, elevators, refrigerators, washing machines, hospitals, computers, and communications networks. It changed the rhythm of daily life and made modern productivity possible. Even when electricity prices rise in certain periods, the broader historical lesson remains clear. Once power became widely accessible, it served as a platform for innovation. No one today would argue that society would have been better off if electricity had stayed rare and expensive.

Computation is now moving through the same curve, only faster. A few generations ago, serious computing was available mainly to governments, universities, and large corporations. Mainframes filled rooms. Processing power was scarce and expensive. Then semiconductors, personal computers, the internet, cloud computing, graphics processors, and specialized AI chips changed the economics. The cost of performing a calculation collapsed by orders of magnitude. More recently, the cost of using AI models has fallen sharply as hardware, software, model architecture, and competition have improved. A capability that once required elite technical teams and enormous budgets can now be accessed through ordinary devices and cloud services.

This is why the falling cost of compute is so important. AI is, in practical terms, a way to convert computation into cognitive assistance. When compute becomes cheaper, the cost of analysis, translation, tutoring, coding, design, simulation, pattern recognition, and decision support also falls. That does not mean every answer becomes perfect or every use becomes wise. But it does mean powerful tools move from the few to the many. A small business can use AI to serve customers, analyze data, and create marketing materials. A student can receive personalized explanations. A doctor can use decision support to identify risks sooner. A researcher can model molecules, proteins, weather systems, or supply chains at a lower cost. A person with limited resources can gain access to expertise that once required money, geography, or institutional status.

The central fear, of course, is work. If AI can perform tasks that people are paid to do, then jobs will change, and some will disappear. That fear is real. Technological transitions are never painless for everyone. Mechanized farming displaced farm labor. Factories displaced artisans. Computers reduced the need for typists, file clerks, and many routine administrative roles. But the deeper historical pattern is not permanent mass unemployment. It is reallocation. When productivity rises, society can produce more with less effort, and new forms of demand emerge. Entire categories of work have emerged that earlier generations could not have imagined, including software engineering, digital marketing, cybersecurity, cloud architecture, app development, data science, and countless others.

AI is likely to continue this process. It will automate some tasks but also amplify human judgment, creativity, and reach. The most productive workers may not be those who compete against AI, but those who learn how to use it well. Lawyers may spend less time reviewing routine documents and more time advising clients. Teachers may spend less time preparing generic materials and more time helping individual students. Doctors may identify patterns earlier while still relying on human empathy and responsibility. Entrepreneurs may build companies with smaller teams and larger ambitions. In this sense, AI is less a replacement for humanity than a lever for human capability.

Still, optimism should not become blindness. The benefits of cheap compute will not be distributed automatically. AI can reproduce bias, invade privacy, flood public life with misinformation, and concentrate wealth if left entirely unmanaged. The answer is not to stop the technology, just as the answer to industrial accidents was not to abandon factories, nor the answer to electrical fires was to reject electricity. The answer is thoughtful governance. That means clear safety standards, transparency where it matters, better education, worker retraining, privacy protections, competition policy, and broad access. Society must shape AI deliberately rather than surrender to either hype or panic.

The strongest case for AI is therefore not that it is harmless. It is that, managed responsibly, it extends a proven pattern of abundance. Cheaper food reduced the burden of survival. Cheaper electricity multiplied physical power. Cheaper compute can multiply intelligence, creativity, and problem-solving. Fear is natural at the beginning of any new era, especially one moving this quickly. But the larger historical lesson is encouraging. When essential inputs become cheaper and more widely available, human beings usually find ways to build more, learn more, heal more, and imagine more. AI will disrupt the economy, but if guided wisely, the falling price of compute may become one of the great engines of progress in the twenty-first century.