The Soho Forum Debates Will AI Benefit Everyone?
15 snips
Jan 30, 2026 
Brian Merchant, AI Now reporter and author who highlights proven harms like surveillance and job loss. Perry Metzger, technologist and author who champions AI’s boosts to productivity, medicine, and mobility. They clash over automation, medical breakthroughs, transportation safety, agricultural robots, creative destruction, labor impacts, and policy responses in a lively debate.
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Automation Multiplied Material Wealth
- Industrial automation massively increased per-person wealth by making goods far cheaper and more abundant.
- Perry Metzger argues AI is a continuation of that productivity revolution that will similarly raise living standards for nearly everyone.
AI Adds Scalable Intellectual Capacity
- AI can add intellectual firepower without increasing population, accelerating problem solving.
- Perry Metzger frames AI as a way to scale minds addressing medicine, infrastructure, and complex tasks.
Use AI To Cut Traffic Fatalities
- Deploy autonomous vehicles to substantially reduce road deaths caused by human error.
- Combine AI with electrification to broaden safe, accessible transport for disabled and non-drivers.
