The Thinking Economy

Abstract

Most developed countries are now in the last years of the Thinking Economy. As physical labor became automated, human physical labor became devalued. This created a Thinking Economy, in which the most valued human skill was thinking. We still mostly live in the Thinking Economy, but there are starting to be cracks. AI is beginning to make impressive inroads in thinking, which is now threatening the economic value of human thinking. Thinking AI can be usefully categorized into analytical thinking and intuitive thinking. Modern machine learning is making rapid advances in analytical thinking, but has much more trouble with intuitive thinking, which may require a different approach. This means the last human bastion of dominance in the Thinking Economy is intuitive thinking and common sense.