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Spreading AI to the rest of the world

Economist Tyler Cowen predicts a new job category of humans spreading AI to other countries, driven by demand for culturally tailored AI integration rather than pure efficiency. He argues that countries like Peru will prefer human consultants to listen and persuade, creating a growth sector for Americans and Brits living abroad.

read2 min views1 publishedJul 16, 2026
Spreading AI to the rest of the world
Image: Marginal Revolution

Another job we’ll have, I call this imperialism, but I mean that in a value neutral way. But AI comes to different parts of the world at different speeds. I think the countries where AI changes a lot of things first, there’ll be a very high demand for people from those places, which I’ll think to be the US, possibly UK, to go around the rest of the world and teach people in other places how to integrate AI into what we have. And a lot of those demands won’t be fully rational. They won’t be, oh, give us the best possible AI. They’ll be like, oh, we’re Peruvians. We want to keep things a certain way. You may or may not agree, but we want you to give us a version of AI that helps keep it that way. And that will be the job. And I think Americans in particular, probably Brits as well, huge growth sector will be living in other parts of the world spreading AI. And again, the fact that AI can do it better may or may not be true, but I don’t think it’s what will matter. I think the Peruvians or some analogue will want humans to come and listen to their concerns and assure and persuade them as humans, that’s what they’re going to get. I’m not saying it’s always going to go well, but that will always be, I think, a big job for humans to do.

It’s already a growth sector for Americans to want to live abroad. Like we have all this accumulated wealth. Life in America can be a bit dull. Life in Europe in particular is amazing. Personally, I love life in most parts of Latin America. So it’s already a trend for Americans to live overseas. For another reason, it’s nothing to do with AI. So if there are all these future job opportunities, like full of meaning, like come to Kenya, help Kenya, you can save 73 lives or maybe like 73,000 lives, help them build out their AI in a way that’s acceptable to them. That’ll just be this phenomenally rich inner and outer life. And I think it’ll be a great source of job creation.

I have already linked to the transcript of the talk.

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