AI is Rewiring the Economy from cheap goods to cheap services (www.fintechbrainfood.com)

A provocative thesis from Fintech Brainfood argues AI is about to "rewire" the economy by making services—especially knowledge work—dramatically cheaper, upending the goods-driven consumer model. The essay maps a three-phase transition: (1) AI commoditizes entry-level knowledge work (citing Claude 4.1 hitting ~97% of expert capability on 44 tasks), eroding middle-income purchasing power and accelerating layoffs; (2) human behavior shifts from consumption toward goal-seeking as AI handles routine services; (3) new business models emerge that monetize outcomes (health, education, finance, wellbeing) rather than product turnover. The author likens this to containerization’s 97% cut in shipping costs—only now the “container” is a model stack—and highlights key technical/financial stresses: high-margin service industries become distributable at low cost, AI platforms face token-usage-driven unit-economics pressure, and capex/talent bubbles may form around infrastructure. For the AI/ML community this is both an opportunity and a challenge: models and systems must be engineered not just for accuracy but for sustainable unit economics, agentic interfaces, and outcome-based monetization. Platform dynamics (free/engagement → ad monetization → profiteering) complicate this, because AI could become an extremely precise conversion engine even as consumers lose buying power. The implication is a race to build AI agents and business models that drive human flourishing (what the author dubs “Gross Domestic Flourishing”)—bringing low-cost, high-quality services to many—rather than merely optimizing targeted advertising and incremental consumption.