But the number of bushels of wheat that the world needs harvested has been approximately constant per person for the last 2,000 years. If it took many humans&#x27; work days to harvest enough wheat for a community, and now it takes very few work days for the same size community, that&#x27;s progress. But cutting it down past about one person-day isn&#x27;t particularly more progress. Society is not particularly better for having one person per nation oversee the wheatbots instead of one person per city, in the way that it is better for having one person per city oversee the wheatbots instead of half the city be laborers.<p>That is the author&#x27;s claim: whether or not the technical capabilities improve exponentially, the actual value to society quickly tapers off. The fact that the author is claiming that seems obvious enough to me from reading the article, and from reading pg&#x27;s original essay, which is entirely about the market value of technology (not about technology itself).