I wish the author had had the courage of their convictions to extend the analogy all the way to the glue factory. It’s what we are all thinking.

I don’t think you’re realizing that the OP understands this, and that in this analogy, the horses are human beings

One could argue that the quality of life per horse went up, even if the total number of horses went down. Lots more horses now get raised in farms and are trained to participate in events like dressage and other equestrian sports.

> Bill Gates haters who interpret him talking about reducing the rate of birth in Africa

I'm not up to speed here -- is Bill Gates doing work to reduce the birth rates in Africa?

We don't know what the author had in mind, but one has to really be tone deaf to let the weirdness of the discussion go unnoticed. Take a look at the last paragraphs in the text again:

> And not very long after, 93 per cent of those horses had disappeared.

> I very much hope we'll get the two decades that horses did.

> But looking at how fast Claude is automating my job, I think we're getting a lot less.

While most of the text is written from cold economic(ish) standpoint it is really hard not to get bleak impression from it. And the last three sentences express that in vague way too. Some ambiguity is left on purpose so you can interpret the daunting impression your way.

The article presents you with crushing juxtaposition, implicates insane dangers, and leaves you with the feeling of inevitability. Then back to work, I guess.

Horses are pretty and won't try to kill you for "your" food.

Well, in this case corporations stop buying people and just fire them instead of letting them retire. Or an army of Tesla Optimi will send people to the glue factory.

That at least is the fantasy of these people. Fortunately. LLMs don't really work, Tesla cars are still built by KUKA robots (while KUKA has a fraction of Tesla's P/E) and data centers in space are a cocaine fueled dream.