There are few historical figures quoted more often...
...and read less frequently...
...than Adam Smith.
Everyone knows The Wealth of Nations.
Or, more accurately, everyone knows about three sentences from The Wealth of Nations.
Usually involving an invisible hand.
This is unfortunate.
Because if Adam Smith suddenly appeared in twenty-first-century America, he would almost certainly spend the first week asking everyone the same question.
"Has anyone actually finished my book?"
Imagine explaining artificial intelligence to him.
"Well, Professor Smith, we've built machines that can write essays."
"Remarkable."
"They can draft contracts."
"Excellent."
"They can diagnose diseases."
"Extraordinary."
"They can write computer code."
"My goodness."
"They're beginning to replace white-collar workers."
Smith pauses.
"Interesting."
"And many people believe workers simply need to become more adaptable."
Smith nods thoughtfully.
"That is certainly one possibility."
"And others believe the market will naturally solve everything."
Now Smith looks genuinely confused.
"I don't recall writing that."
Because he didn't.
That is perhaps the strangest thing about Adam Smith's modern reputation.
The father of modern economics spent an astonishing amount of time worrying...
...about workers.
Not profits.
Not corporations.
Workers.
Smith certainly admired markets.
He believed competition generated prosperity unlike anything the world had previously experienced.
He marveled at specialization.
He celebrated innovation.
He understood better than almost anyone how productivity could transform entire societies.
But he never confused wealth with wisdom.
Or efficiency with human flourishing.
Modern readers often remember the famous pin factory from the opening chapters of The Wealth of Nations.
Ten workers.
Each performing one specialized task.
Together producing thousands of pins every day.
Smith thought it was astonishing.
Division of labor, he argued, multiplied productivity beyond anything previous generations had imagined.
The Industrial Revolution wasn't simply making things faster.
It was fundamentally changing civilization.
Smith loved that.
He genuinely did.
But unlike many of his modern admirers...
...he kept reading.
Because several hundred pages later, Smith begins worrying about something else entirely.
He writes:
"The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations... generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become."
That is one of the most startling sentences in the history of economics.
It sounds less like a celebration of capitalism...
...and more like a warning label.
Smith's concern wasn't that factories were evil.
Quite the opposite.
Factories created enormous wealth.
His concern was that increasing productivity often required increasingly specialized labor.
The economy became smarter.
Individual jobs sometimes became simpler.
The nation grew richer.
Workers risked becoming intellectually poorer.
That tradeoff troubled him deeply.
In fact, he worried that repetitive labor eventually left workers incapable of exercising judgment, participating fully in civic life, or developing their intellectual abilities.
This is why Adam Smith, of all people, argued that governments should support public education.
Not despite capitalism.
Because of capitalism.
He wrote that education helped prevent ordinary workers from becoming mentally diminished by the very economic system that had made the nation prosperous.
Think about how strange that sounds today.
The man widely celebrated as the patron saint of free markets...
...arguing that the market itself created problems requiring public solutions.
Smith was far more nuanced than either his defenders or his critics usually admit.
Which brings us to artificial intelligence.
Most discussions about AI focus on one question.
Will it replace jobs?
Smith would undoubtedly care.
But he might ask a different one.
What kind of work remains?
The Industrial Revolution automated muscle.
Artificial intelligence increasingly automates routine thought.
Machines once lifted heavy objects.
Now they summarize reports.
Draft legal briefs.
Write computer code.
Design logos.
Translate languages.
Compose music.
Generate lesson plans.
Answer customer service questions.
Even write podcasts about Adam Smith.
One suspects he would've found that last development especially unsettling.
Modern debates often frame AI as a contest between humans and machines.
Smith would've framed it differently.
He would've asked whether economic progress continued serving human development...
...or whether humans increasingly existed to serve economic progress.
That is not the same question.
And it leads to very different answers.
Suppose artificial intelligence makes accountants dramatically more productive.
Wonderful.
Suppose lawyers finish research in half the time.
Excellent.
Suppose doctors identify diseases more accurately.
Remarkable.
Smith would've applauded every one of those developments.
He admired innovation.
He believed societies became wealthier by discovering better ways to accomplish difficult tasks.
But then he would've asked something modern conversations often skip.
"What becomes of the worker?"
Not merely...
"Can they find another job?"
But...
"Will that new work require judgment?"
Creativity?
Responsibility?
Learning?
Or will it consist largely of supervising increasingly intelligent software?
Smith understood something economists still wrestle with today.
Productivity and prosperity are not identical.
One can contribute to the other.
Neither guarantees the other.
He warned repeatedly against confusing economic growth with human improvement.
The purpose of wealth was never wealth itself.
It was better lives.
That distinction matters.
Especially now.
There is another passage from The Wealth of Nations that deserves far more attention than it receives.
Discussing the effects of repetitive labor, Smith warned that workers could become:
"...incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation."
Imagine writing that in an economics textbook today.
Economists are not generally known for emotional prose.
Smith wasn't being sentimental.
He was making a political argument.
A healthy commercial republic required citizens capable of reasoning, debating, judging, and participating in public life.
An economy that enriched the nation while intellectually impoverishing its people contained dangers that no GDP chart could capture.
Artificial intelligence raises that concern all over again.
Not because machines are becoming more intelligent.
Because humans may be asked to become less engaged.
If software performs the analysis...
Who develops the analytical skills?
If software writes the first draft...
Who learns to write?
If software makes the recommendations...
Who learns judgment?
Smith wouldn't oppose the technology.
He almost certainly would've embraced it.
He spent his life admiring innovation.
But he would insist upon asking what innovation was for.
There is a tendency in modern debates to speak about markets as though they possess goals of their own.
They don't.
Markets are mechanisms.
Not moral philosophies.
Smith understood this perfectly.
In fact, his earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, argued that prosperous societies ultimately depended upon virtues markets alone could never produce.
Sympathy.
Judgment.
Self-command.
Public spirit.
These qualities were not luxuries.
They were the foundations of civilized commercial life.
Which is why Smith would probably find today's AI debate oddly incomplete.
Everyone wants to know whether artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs.
Smith would wonder whether it eliminates opportunities to become wiser.
Those are different concerns.
One concerns employment.
The other concerns civilization.
There is another irony Smith would've enjoyed.
Artificial intelligence promises to free people from routine work.
Wonderful.
The question then becomes...
Free them...
...to do what?
Create?
Invent?
Learn?
Teach?
Care for others?
Participate more fully in civic life?
Or simply produce even more output before the next quarterly earnings report?
Smith would've insisted that how society answered that question mattered enormously.
Economic progress without corresponding human development would strike him as incomplete.
Successful.
Certainly.
But incomplete.
He would've walked through modern America with genuine admiration.
He would've marveled at computers.
Airplanes.
Medical imaging.
Space exploration.
The internet.
Artificial intelligence.
He would've declared the productive capacity of modern capitalism almost miraculous.
Then, as always, he would've looked past the machines.
Toward the people using them.
Because Adam Smith never believed prosperity existed merely to increase production.
He believed production existed to improve human lives.
He would've closed the laptop.
Folded his hands.
And quietly asked the question that still lingers over every discussion about artificial intelligence.
"You have taught the machines to think."
"Wonderful."
"Now..."
"What are you teaching the people?"