People being paid by the hour is just a result of simplifying work, in the very past everyone was a merchant and they sold their goods/services.
The same old behaviour should be applied to machines, it doesn't matter how much resource a machine takes to do the job, what is important is the output. The pay should not be X*Watts, but X agreed in advance for training that specific neural network, this type of market incentives evolution, where the machines that can do the same job with lower resources have the lower hand
> in the very past everyone was a merchant and they sold their goods/services
In the past nearly everyone was a serf and they provided their goods/services to their lieges in exchange for basic needs like having someplace to live.
In the present it's pretty much the same thing, except with us serfs being paid wages (which we then end up spending most of as rent and taxes) and serving multiple lieges.
I normally push back at calling consumer capitalism "freedom", but the freedom to leave your employment is a huge one and the serfs didn't have that. The whole idea of just being able to pick up and move somewhere would be alien to most historical peasants.
That's part of what I'm getting at with the "multiple lieges" bit. Feudal lordship and fealty are more fungible now than they were centuries ago, but the fundamental power dynamic remains; being able to swap out lords ostensibly at will is one of those "illusion of freedom" things that helps us feel slightly less bad about our exploitation.
The same old behaviour should be applied to machines, it doesn't matter how much resource a machine takes to do the job, what is important is the output. The pay should not be X*Watts, but X agreed in advance for training that specific neural network, this type of market incentives evolution, where the machines that can do the same job with lower resources have the lower hand