During the Industrial Revolution, the automobile entered the world without an infrastructure around it.
- There were no paved roads.
- No gasoline stations or repair shops.
- People didn’t know how to drive.
Companies tied to the horse-and-carriage industry spread fear, warning the public that automobiles were dangerous. And yet, every successful innovation creates entire industries around it.
- Think about the industries that opened up following a new practical invention or innovation. With each new invention or innovation, entire industries were created:
- The electric incandescent lamp.
- The first printed book.
- The transistor radio.
- The personal computer.
- The web.
- The internet.
- The mobile phone.
Each one didn’t just replace what came before—it opened an entirely new possibility space.
So as we look at the transformation of societies over the past few centuries, imagine what’s emerging now.
Jamie Arbib, co-founder (with Tony Seba) of RethinkX, has been at the forefront of understanding and forecasting technological disruption. Rather than focusing on gadgets or novelty, they’ve assembled a global team of forward-thinking researchers whose reports, books, programs, and videos clearly articulate what these changes mean for people—and for the planet.
For example:
- Transforming dirty, extractive energy systems into clean, renewable energy
- Transforming expensive, resource-intensive protein production into precision fermentation
- Transforming information systems that trap us in attention loops into systems that inform, educate, and empower collective coexistence
- Transforming personal vehicle ownership into public transportation and transportation-as-a-service
This is not a slow transition.
It’s moving faster than most people can fully comprehend.
Mobilized News was created to amplify the voices of people on the front lines of that change.
And consider this: most wars are fought over land and resources. A fundamentally different production and ownership paradigm could slow conflict and open pathways toward healthier, more peaceful coexistence.
So let’s do a reality check.
Mobilized News’ Steven Jay spoke with Jamie Arbib, Co-founder of Rethink about where things are at right now, and where they could begin. It all begins with a question:
How can people gain clarity about this bold systemic transformation—especially around what’s on everyone’s mind: AI, robots, and jobs?
Jamie Arbib
Let’s start by setting the scene.
Imagine 10 or 20 years from now. Robotics and artificial intelligence continue along the same improvement trajectory we’ve seen over the past decade. By that point, they’ll be capable of doing most of what humans currently do in the labor force.
That’s understandably terrifying. People fear joblessness. They worry about how they’ll support their families.
But there’s another way to see it.
This could be the greatest opportunity humanity has ever had. freedom from labor. Freedom from the necessity to work in order to survive.
If we have an abundance of labor and intelligence, we gain the capacity to do things we simply can’t do today. It opens a completely different possibility space.
So what determines whether this becomes a dystopia of joblessness or a world of liberation?
It comes down to how we organize society.
If we stay on our current trajectory—where the world’s labor and intelligence are owned by a handful of corporations or states—then yes, we end up in a dystopian place. Civilization doesn’t benefit from the abundance. The value is captured by a narrow few.
That fear is real. It’s why people resist this transition. And that resistance is completely understandable.
But if we go down that path, we’ve failed—utterly. We’ve allowed one of the greatest transformations in human history to benefit almost no one.
There is an alternative. One where the superabundance of intelligence and labor serves humanity rather than displacing it.
That alternative depends on ownership models, social structures, and how we organize value.
What this transformation really does is expand the possibility space of what humans can do. That’s the conversation we need to be having.
Let’s step back and look at how change actually happens.
A useful example is electricity.
More than a century ago, electricity emerged as a foundational technology—much like AI and robotics today. It didn’t just create new industries; it transformed existing ones.
Before electricity, cooling meant harvesting lake ice in winter, storing it underground, and rationing it through summer. It was crude, expensive, and limited.
Electricity opened an entirely new possibility space: refrigeration. Suddenly, every home could cool food independently. Distribution changed. Costs collapsed. New industries emerged.
That’s what’s happening with labor today.
Most of today’s narrative is substitutional: robots replacing jobs one-for-one. And yes, that will happen. Over the next few decades, most human labor as we know it will be replaced.
But that’s not the most important change.
The real transformation is what becomes possible when labor is no longer scarce—when it becomes abundant and deflationary.
You gain intelligence beyond human capacity. You gain labor at a scale we’ve never had before. That creates entirely new markets and possibilities that don’t exist today.
We’re moving from a world constrained by scarce labor, energy, and materials into one where those constraints largely disappear.
That’s an extraordinary boon for humanity—something we’d have to seriously mismanage to get wrong.
This isn’t substitution. It’s transformation.
Just as a car wasn’t simply a faster horse, this isn’t just automation—it’s a new terrain altogether.
Mobilized
That reminds me of visiting Thomas Edison’s labs in West Orange as a child—seeing how recorded sound and film completely transformed music and entertainment. Entire industries were created because the technology demanded new content.
People feared those changes too—electricity causing fires, cars causing accidents. Today, AI and robotics trigger similar fears.
But they also open enormous opportunities for training and local innovation—outside traditional institutions that are trying to preserve old models.
So what industries are opening up now that people should be paying attention to?
Jamie Arbib
That question goes straight to the heart of it.
The real value of electricity wasn’t the grid—it was everything built on top of it. Same with the internet. The value emerged from applications and use cases.
We believe the same will be true with artificial labor and intelligence.
At the same time, we’re undergoing an energy transition toward superabundant clean power. When you combine abundant energy with abundant labor, the question becomes: what’s possible?
That’s where entrepreneurship lives.
For example, climate change becomes solvable—not theoretically, but economically. Carbon sequestration at scale becomes feasible. Vertical farming becomes viable. Localized, distributed food systems emerge.
Today, energy and labor costs make these solutions uneconomic. In the new paradigm, those constraints vanish.
The mistake we make is thinking substitutionally—doing the same things a little differently—rather than designing for an entirely new landscape.
Those who treat energy, compute, and labor as abundant will outcompete those who cling to scarcity thinking—just as we saw with bandwidth and computing.
That’s why we need living laboratories—cities, regions, communities experimenting with governance, ownership, and production models now.
Mobilized
People also worry about AI’s energy and water use—but that fear comes from imagining AI running on industrial-age systems. This transition includes new energy models too.
I’ve also seen how technology transforms healthcare. A triple bypass was once radical. Today it’s routine. Preventative medicine powered by AI could fundamentally change health outcomes.
So how does all this intersect with our extractive economic system?
Jamie Arbib
Our current economic model is built on scarcity.
Land, labor, capital—finite inputs extracted and allocated efficiently. Competitive advantage comes from controlling those inputs.
The model we describe in Stellar is fundamentally different.
Once you’ve built sufficient energy and labor capacity, the system no longer requires ongoing inputs. Intelligence and labor are embodied in the technology itself.
It becomes more like a star than a fire.
A fire needs constant fuel. A star simply radiates output.
In this model, economics flips. Value is no longer about allocating scarce inputs—it’s about optimally using abundant outputs.
That breaks the traditional supply-demand relationship. Waste becomes failing to use what’s already being produced.
Private ownership, which once drove efficiency, can become a disadvantage—adding unnecessary cost.
This isn’t communism. Communism failed in an extractive context. This is a new possibility space entirely.
The real challenges are:
- Protecting people during the transition
- Designing ownership models that ensure humanity benefits
- Re-imagining meaning, purpose, and community in a post-labor world
That’s a cultural transformation as much as an economic one.
Mobilized
So the question becomes: what do we do in that world?
Jamie Arbib
Exactly. If all we can imagine is a dystopia, that’s a failure of imagination.
In a world where our needs are met and time is abundant, we gain the freedom to explore, create, build relationships, deepen community, and discover new forms of purpose.
There won’t be a single answer. Different cultures and communities will find different paths.
But it could be the greatest voyage of discovery humanity has ever undertaken.
And we have agency. This transition can begin locally—in cities, towns, and regions experimenting now.
It will be messy. Some places will get it wrong. There will be pain.
But I’m deeply optimistic.
The sooner we see the emerging possibility space clearly, the easier the journey will be.
Otherwise, everything looks like a threat—and we end up fighting shadows.
