AI is not a normal technology because it is fully general
The debate over AI's impact boils down to whether it can acquire every human capability. If it can, then any new jobs it creates are also jobs it can do, leading to a world where AI does all the work. This generality makes AI unlike cars or factory automation, and it threatens to devalue anything humans can do, from writing to mathematics. Even AI supporters like Terence Tao now warn of severe misalignment with human goals.
Things are valuable if they are rare; anything an AI can do won’t be rare; therefore, the value of “anything a human can do” drops to zero.