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← People and their mental models

Phil Trammell's mental models

2 claims Phil Trammell made fit 2 mental models. Most often: Trade-offs, Value moves to what stays scarce. Everything they said here.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Trade-offs

Every choice gives something up, so name the cost; and check, because some trade-offs everyone assumes are not real.

Used by 60 others

There is far less trade-off than people assume between a safer AI race and widely shared gains: a big lead can be held by a widely owned public company.

  1. Phil Trammell Economist working on the economics of transformative AI some people think either uh frontier AI gets commoditized and we all enjoy the benefits, but there might be some risk because like it's the market's really competitive and cutthroat, or um things are safer because there's a big gap between the leader and the laggard, but that means that the leaders get fantastically wealthy. No, like you could just have a relatively big gap, but it's a public company ownership and it's widely distributed. The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com · 4 Jun 2026 · 1:14:44 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordssome people think either uh frontier AI gets commoditized and we all enjoy the benefits, but there might be some risk because like it's the market's really competitive and cutthroat, or um things are safer because there's a big gap between the leader and the laggard, but that means that the leaders get fantastically wealthy. No, like you could just have a relatively big gap, but it's a public company ownership and it's widely distributed.

    Where this was said

    Watch from 1:14:44 plays here

    ↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com

    4 Jun 2026 · video · 1h 16m · spoken · machine transcript

Value moves to what stays scarce

When something becomes cheap and plentiful, the value moves to whatever is still rare next to it.

Used by 59 others

Automating everything except the ballerina need not raise labour's share, because the marginal value of the automated stuff falls faster than its quantity rises.

  1. Phil Trammell Economist working on the economics of transformative AI then the quantity of everything that's not a ballerina, say, goes to infinity, but our the marginal utility in that stuff goes to zero faster than the quantity is rising. The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com · 4 Jun 2026 · 0:09:37 into the videoAll korrents from this video
    Their wordsthen the quantity of everything that's not a ballerina, say, goes to infinity, but our the marginal utility in that stuff goes to zero faster than the quantity is rising.

    Where this was said

    Watch from 0:09:37 plays here

    ↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com

    4 Jun 2026 · video · 1h 16m · spoken · machine transcript