Can AI Become a True Equalizer or Will It Only Deepen Global Wealth Gaps?

Eleni Floros: Welcome back to Fintech Bites, where finance, technology and culture and power collide. Today's episode is about a big idea, universal prosperity. In an era where AI is reshaping work, Fintech is redefining access to money and billionaires are becoming cultural celebrities. We have to ask who is the future economy really being built for?

From the growing influence of figures like Jeff Bezos. has ⁓ Fintech democratized wealth creation? I think it has and it will even get better, but it all depends how governments it for it to happen. Right now we are ⁓ a lot of unemployment.

People are losing their jobs, which means they lose their income, ⁓ means they go into their savings to be able to pay their bills. ⁓ if you're a little bit elderly, it becomes difficult to find a new job. And of course you have a lot of unemployed students right now they don't even find an entry job ⁓ that they pursue. to the symbolism of events like the Met Gala.

Wealth today isn't just financial, it's cultural, technological and deeply visible. so today we're unpacking the tension between innovation and equality, aspiration and excess, ⁓ and whether can truly create a world of broader opportunity or simply make the rich richer faster. Let's get into it. What does universal prosperity actually mean today?

or an internship so they don't have income as well. So if you take away the one thing that you need the markets which is capital, then it becomes difficult to participate. ⁓ But is important when you go from what we have now which is a service and goods based economy to an asset based economy, when you have democratization of wealth which is fractional ownership of ⁓ assets, ⁓ Well, to me it's just a smoke screen to make it all look like it's going in the right direction. The universal prosperity is the question that you need to ask is for who basically it's for the elite that are going to ⁓ benefiting from this.

OpenAI Altman just published a white paper called the Industrial which is different than owning shares into a company, ⁓ becomes possible for you to build up assets and to build up certain wealth and even a passive income and ⁓ you build on that by reinvesting your money into the assets that own. So from ⁓ a retail perspective a very great opportunity. policy for the of intelligence and he talks about that they would contribute a fund which would share not money compute so you would AI tokens that you can use to compute now that already sounds crazy because AI tokens will not buy you food and ⁓ not everybody wants use AI tokens because ⁓ Because when you use blockchain and you do this kind of asset transactions, peer to peer.

So you're still going to have ⁓ platform in between all of this. But you're dealing from one peer to another. Whereas you go through the traditional financial markets which are today, and you want to buy shares or you want to buy bonds or you want to do whatever, ⁓ any financial you go through different intermediaries. you might not live in the US, you might live Africa or the Middle East or the Far East where you just want to live off the land.

And so what DID is, and it's, you know, ⁓ my opinion just insane. ⁓ what is he talking about? So the big tech companies, you know, the Googles, Sam Altman, OpenAI, ⁓ they would pull their ⁓ ⁓ of, and from the money that they make, And those intermediaries make money rain or shine. They make money when it goes good and they make money when it goes bad.

They make a commission on every trade transaction that happens on their platform. that's good and bad at the same time. You know, if everything goes good, you pay your commission, you made your money and you're working through a platform where you feel somehow safe, knowing there's a big bank ⁓ behind ⁓ And another thing that is a problem with decentralized finance and also they would pay a 2.5 % into this fund.

So basically they are saying to everybody, you just tax us for 2.5 % flat rate tax and 97.5 % is for us to do what we want. This money goes to a fund which is then administered by government or governments.

And so basically they are just a middle man distributing... tokenized trading is that the platforms don't really have established names. Although now is already going full on and ⁓ incorporating assets and ⁓ now a of stock exchanges and ⁓ financial institutions, ones, are going into that ⁓ business of fractional ownership and ⁓ assets on blockchain you can buy and sell. the money, the tokens to people across the world.

then ⁓ with those tokens, people can ⁓ to live a life of abundance. So from beginning to the end, it's absolutely insane. First off, it will just create the biggest inequality in the world between the haves and the have nots. So the AI will then be controlling everything.

on their market and that opens up the door to the future of FinTech. Partially, I would say from my side, fintech lowered barriers dramatically, but people can now invest from their phones, access global markets or start businesses online. But access alone isn't quality. The people who already had capital education and networks still benefited the most from the digital boom.

But now with AI, think that barrier has from the government on down. Government basically will be replaced because it's just going to be the big AI companies that's going to decide on what's happening in the world. And just a mere notion that everybody is going to be on the payroll of big tech, the same companies that took away all the jobs or at least are planning to take away most of the jobs, if not all, they want to give us a little handout in the form of lowered even more because people can do a lot more now and start a digital business in seconds if they wanted to.

do billionaire figures attract both admiration and criticism? tokens which you cannot put on a sandwich to eat it's absolutely insane and so to make it all a little bit more palatable and sound really nice he doesn't talk about universal basic AI or universal basic compute he has changed the narrative to universal prosperity which sounds like ⁓ my god you know what happened to him has become altruistic he's looking for the welfare of the whole world and he's gonna share admiration, when you see somebody start from scratch and become a billionaire, most are happy.

Of course, there people that are jealous, why him and not me or why her and not me. But in general, when you see somebody start and build up something and they provide a good service or a good platform, you say, well, you know, they're making something that is useful to society. The fortune, the question is what are they gonna share? They're not gonna share.

mean, do we get to vote in all of this? Do we get to decide? What if it goes wrong? What if it doesn't work out?

What if they make mistakes? Who gets to vote? Who's the leader? Who's gonna run the show here?

It's absolutely insane. And that a few people think that they're just gonna do it. the way they talk, it sounds like it's ⁓ it's a, already a given that they are just gonna decide what's gonna happen. But where it becomes a problem is when people are billionaires, not only one billion by a hundred billion or a couple hundred billion, or like Elon Musk, where you go from being a billionaire to the first trillionaire, which is a one followed by 12 zeros, or in other words, one thousand billion.

So you think to yourself, these people, could solve poverty, hunger, So what I see coming soon is just going to be massive protests about all of this because at the end of the day, when you start losing your job, you don't care about future plans. The only thing you care about is how you're going to pay your bills today, how you're going to pay your rent today, how you're going to put your children through school today. So all of this future talk and this narrative that we're going to live in abundance and as Elon Musk would say, work will become optional.

Inequality in one go. They could invest a billion or two or a hundred and just solve a lot of problems in the world. But they don't. So now instead of doing what's good for the world, we were facing geopolitical tensions.

face climate change, pollution, and so on and so on. of doing something about that, they're investing billions trillions into data centers. Data centers is not food. Sounds crazy to me.

think universal prosperity doesn't necessarily mean everyone becomes rich. It means everyone has meaningful access to economic participation, banking, investing, education, healthcare, and the ability to build wealth over time. And that only happens if you have work. that narrative is completely changing right now with AI.

And ⁓ seeing a real shift to it becoming maybe survival economics because then governments have to step in, potentially. And it's also not employment because they presented like, well, we're going to get a 1 billion or a 10 billion data center in our neighborhood. It's just going to pollute. It's not like people are going to get employed.

The average data center employs 10 to 50 people and the big ones might employ maybe 100 to 200. You know, so the whole community of thousands of maybe even millions are suffering. They don't have access to clean water. The price will go up because they need to clean water to cool the data centers.

They need power, which is the biggest block that they have right now, because none of the power grids can supply the energy need to keep those data centers powered and running up and running, because you cannot switch them off at night to start in the morning. They're on 24 seven, 365 days a year. So what's gonna happen is they gonna try to get energy one way or another. So what are they doing now?

Fossil fuels, we're going up. and restarting coal mines. We are just looking at putting data centers in space. And they're talking about putting 33,000 data centers across the world.

And again, what difference is it going to make to the average person, to the average citizen on planet Earth? Nothing. It's just going to create a lot of discomfort, pollution and inequality. So now a lot of people are starting to hate AI.

this what I call AI rage, where people say we had enough of all of this. What we want is we want to live life like we know it. And that means humanity in the first place. And I think it's right to that way ⁓ to be that way, because what billionaires are doing is right now, the AI elite is only thinking about themselves, ⁓ more and nothing less.

I think what they represent is two competing narratives at once. So on the one hand, like you say, they symbolize ambition, innovation and possibility for many, but on the other, they reflect how concentrated wealth and power have become. Public fascination often exists alongside public resentment. Yeah, exactly.

And can you tell me a bit more what the recent Met Gala stunt was with the Amazon warehouse workers? disgrace, ⁓ and at the same time. For one thing, to start off with, ⁓ the Met is one of the most prestigious events of the of the fashion calendar and of the fashion industry. Anna Wintour is running show together with Vogue.

They raise money ⁓ for the costumes. So, you how much money you possibly raise? Watch me. a seat at table costs you cool 100.

000 and you know if you want to sit as a co-chair next to Anna Wintour or the other co-chairs you to pay a little bit more ⁓ to tune of 10 million so here comes Jeff Bezos 10 million for him is pretty much pocket money he wanted put his wife in the spotlight ⁓ and he that and he became co-sponsor of the Met Gala. backfired so badly because now everybody doesn't call it the Met Gala, they call it the ⁓ Prime Gala, ⁓ is disgraceful and people are comparing it to having dropped to the T-MU level.

⁓ So complaints so bad that Jeff Bezos himself had to come through a back door to avoid being insulted or ⁓ overrun by or whatever. And then his Sanchez, she came through the front door and she dressed up in some kind of dress which from a perspective, ⁓ designer perspective quite cheap. said how on earth is it possible to take a dress like that and make it look Timo quality? And so the backlash on social media hard.

Parallel to that people were complaining because Amazon doesn't treat its employees right and so people are not allowed to use the facilities to go for a toilet break so unfortunately they have to urinate bottles and that ⁓ a disgrace is happening across the world and people don't it so this one group called Everybody hates Elon Now, unfortunately, Elon doesn't have anything to see with that, but this group that also hates Elon raised money, $15,000, and they all flew to New York, took fake bottles of urine and put the face of a smiling Jeff Bezos on it and a yellow liquid and then hid it all over the Met gallery.

Now, of course, it was filmed and it was posted on social media it was this crazy. And then they had flyers and they had billboards with people complaining about Amazon Amazon is the sponsor of Met Gala and that they should boycott it ⁓ then the biggest insult actually came when they beamed a 72 old woman that had lost a job at Amazon ⁓ and she complaining about it and she was saying on that movie or that production she said well I lost my job and shame on you Jeff. Now this was beamed on the 120 million dollar penthouse of Jeff Bezos in New York City and so it was so bad the backlash that Anna Wintour from Vogue had an emergency meeting with staff to see how they could contain it and keep the narrative going and so on and so on but Some people didn't even show up anymore to the event because they thought that they had to take a stand and they wanted to show it by not showing up.

And the biggest one that didn't show up was Zoran, the York City mayor, ⁓ decided not to go. And he is one of the traditional ones to go. The New York City mayor goes to every single Met Gala. And time it was declined the invitation.

And so he prove this point by saying I'm not gonna go and be part of this. the sad part in all of this is, ⁓ what Amazon have to do with fashion? I mean, okay, they might sell some sneakers some socks and underwear on Amazon, ⁓ but it's Chanel and it's definitely not Armani. So it a disgrace.

I think ⁓ the backlash it ⁓ lowered the image and standard and status the Met Gala and so I think it backfired completely. That's where you see where money can just buy you into the right seats, right? Yeah, well, I mean, you know, and then what he put forward, I mean, if you look at her, the way she was dressed, she didn't look like following the fashion script, because the script was that they would dress up differently. There is a certain motto that they follow, a certain, you know, it has to be related to fashion.

And this looked more like... in art. not artists look more like Budlesk or whatever you want to call it. You I'm not going to go into the details but just look at the pictures ⁓ then you can tell that she absolutely, talking about the wife of Jeff Bezos, she didn't fit into this at all ⁓ on from that ⁓ another question, can AI become financial equalizer?

I it's going to be very very difficult because the AI elites they just ⁓ hoovering up the millions and the billions and the trillions to the top and just cleaning out the middle segment 60 % of the middle class ⁓ is going to disappear so you're to have the halves which are going to be the elite which is going to be the 0000.1 and then you only have at the bottom the rest which is everybody else, billion people of us. there is going to be a great inequality in all of this because at the end of the day if people are not employed who's going to buy what's being produced by AI?

Nobody. And I mean not everybody is going to become a plumber and not everybody is going to become a waiter or bartender to serve the AI elite. So what are all these people gonna do? The governments, are they gonna be able to pay for everybody to sit around and get UBI or universal prosperity if you wanna announce it and...

No. So need to have a complete rethink of the economic model from the bottom up. And that has become a problem on its own. But I say, you know, let's start ⁓ with there.

So... We have now calculated that AI takes up tokens. So tokens is spoken word in compute. So one token is like one word.

So you use tokens, you're tokens priced to AI that's providing that. In this case, Anthropic, OpenAI, whatever. Taxi, 25%. tax it at the point of sale at the point of consumption so even if open AI is based in the US anybody that ⁓ uses AI tokens pays 25 % in here so you put it as a value added tax and then take that money and then you can solve a lot of problems also governments can give incentives and disincentives if you replace humans with ⁓ robots you pay 100 % tax on it.

To people from ⁓ firing so that they can take robots instead. Another thing is incentivize. If you hire a student and you keep them for three years into the company, you can deduct the whole thing. Like that, people will be more inclined to hire young students and grads than taking robots.

And at the end of the day, somebody needs to train those robots because models, the data models are already ⁓ outdated. So they need more new data. So where is this data going to come from? And who's going to train that?

⁓ who has the experience, ⁓ critical thinking, the discernment, ⁓ just the human interaction in all of this? will be the young people. So if you knock out the bottom inflow of ⁓ students that are going to become the next managers, The older managers eventually they're going to retire, they're going to move up to some point and then who's going to replace them. So it is quite a challenging thing and the most biggest problem is that it's not enough to do it in one country.

You need to do it on a global scale and that's going to be the biggest challenge. I think potentially AI could provide financial advice to billions of people at so little cost ⁓ that's definitely revolutionary. But ⁓ only a handful of companies control the AI infrastructure and data, the wealth generated could become even more concentrated. Are younger generations ⁓ success?

Not really. is taking over a lot of things that we could use ⁓ developing anything. So ⁓ new new materials, new services, new goods is now using AI because AI can process billions of data and then come out with a number at lightning speed, whereas normal human will take a long time to develop something. So what it does, AI, it facilitates, it augments, it makes it easier Okay, there's still going to be human input, but where's balance?

How much is going to be AI and how much is going to be human? I think the humans are still going to be part of it because we are the ones that are the people actually see and feel things. And we look at things from a different perspective than a robot, which is ⁓ computation. It's So the interaction AI and human intelligence is going to be tricky but I do believe in collaborative AI where we're going to use AI as a tool to come up with new medicines, with new products, with new materials ⁓ that is something that needs again to be decided ⁓ ⁓ governments in order to have that kind of science you need to make sure that the students that go through universities have an opportunity to learn and to make a living off of that because who's going to spend money to go follow science in the university when there is no job prospects.

So you need to know that at the end of your studies there is some kind of job lined up for you. I think what I was referring to is also that youngsters, like for example, Fabian Hedin, he's the CTO at Lovable. He's 26 and he was one of Europe's youngest self-made billionaires. And they founded the company Lovable and it was a Stockholm based company, which was valued at 6.

6 billion in late 2025. And I think younger audiences definitely value flexibility, ownership. audience building and independence over traditional corporate prestige. think back the day, the older generations thought that being in a company for 10, 15, 20 years, you're ⁓ your career and go into retirement.

⁓ think now people are really redefining it and looking, how can I start my own business? How can I build something on my own? ⁓ ⁓ think success today is becoming more about leverage. small.

owning platforms or communities and building something of your own. Well, having that opportunity is great. Basically, they're now speculating who's going to be the first person, ⁓ man show that ⁓ a billion dollar company. And I'm not talking about market valuation because that can happen really fast.

Lely Hira, ⁓ becoming valued at one billion within three months, which is just unheard of. But actually a company that makes one billion, that actually has revenues of one billion, is going to come sooner than later. And it's great and it gives people the opportunity and hope that you know if I want to make a change I can. The problem is not everybody wants to do that.

Not everybody has the capacity to do that. Not everybody is mathematical. Not everybody is a coder. Not everybody wants to be that.

Some people just want to be creative. So what if you are good singer? Do you want to ⁓ a one billion dollar AI company? No, you just want to go on stage and sing.

⁓ it's going to create opportunities for the few. but it's going to leave a vacuum for the most people because not everybody is in that level. So if everybody goes to university wanting to become an entrepreneur, how many companies will we have and doing what? Like will we have 1 million companies producing cars, 1 million content creators, 1 million ⁓ companies building ⁓ desktop computers or the next smartphone or the next whatever?

No, of course not. So... you're going to have a saturation where they're going to have to limit. And then when they limit, it's going to be like now going to a prestige university.

If you want to go to Harvard, they have 25,000 applications per year. Only a few percentage points of people make it in there. And then who makes it? The ones that can afford it.

And so then they have reserved maybe 1 % or a half a percent for brilliant students that don't have the money and they just give them know, possible sponsorship they give them a scholarship and they let them go to So you're reducing it to 1 % or less. And that's going to happen the same with all of this. So you're going to have the opportunity to do things, but how many people are going to be able to get through that door? That door is going to be so narrow that you're not going to be able to fit in 1,000 people alone, 1 million or 1 billion.

⁓ So... Yeah, it sounds good and it's like ⁓ presented like look, you know, if you try hard enough, ⁓ can make it, you know, and that's the dangling the carrot in front of your nose like they're doing today. Like if you just work hard enough, long enough, ⁓ you will be able to enjoy that carrot. And that's been like that for as long as I can remember.

And it's ⁓ giving false hopes and it's not going to do any good. So okay, we are giving opportunities, but we don't need to look at a few 1 % unless we need to look at what the other 99 is going to do. I think this conversation is around universal prosperity. It's really a conversation about the future of capitalism itself and our economic system and technologies creating extraordinary opportunity, but it's also concentrating influence at unprecedented scale.

The question isn't whether innovation will continue. will. The question is whether the benefits of that innovation will be broadly shared. As fintech, AI and culture continue to merge, we'll all have to decide what kind of economy and society we actually want to build.

Thanks for tuning into Fintech Bytes. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone thinking deeply about money, technology and the future, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.