> But let's say a smart Zimbabwean figures out a way to genetically modify Chlorella or Spiroulina which only need sun and no particular climate or fertile land and he produces so much olive oil that it's price collapses to nothing.

That's a hell of an industrious Zimbabwean, firstly.

Secondly though, while I understand where your metaphor is aiming, it just doesn't really work. There has never been a "business with a competitive advantage" on the scale of human creative output vs. AI. I would argue even this example you've cooked up which already strains belief on several points doesn't truly capture it.

AI in your example wouldn't be one person in one place that can make a product at unbelievable scale; I think it would be more analogous to everyone on Earth suddenly having a machine on their countertop that produces Olive Oil by itself, of low quality, for free, forever. And I think the effects would be similar: any producer of less than fantastic olive oil would go bankrupt, because they're effectively competing with a free product (not unlike the Netscape Navigator vs Internet Explorer problem) and most consumers who are fine with a low-grade oil have zero reason to buy more when they can just buy access to the infinite olive oil maker. You would also then have producers of food both industrial and restaurants who would begin advertising that they use real proper olive oil, many of which would doubtlessly be using the shitty stuff from our imaginary machine or perhaps a blend of both to cut costs, but nevertheless, this hurts the producers of the good stuff too, because again, they are competing with a free-at-point-of-use product.

And like, on balance, all of this is just a net negative for everyone:

* A lot of the olive oil is worse now, for everyone, seemingly permanently absent regulations

* People are now losing a lot of counter space to the machine

* We've obliterated an entire agricultural sector and farmers who have done nothing but this their entire lives have to retrain jobs and/or their land has to be used to grow something else

* One company that made the infinite olive oil machine now has billions and billions of dollars, that they have earned by making the other three things happen

And just... why? Why is this a good thing for humanity? Put aside the stupid game with the made up money and line go up and justify to me why we've now done this, because it seems like everyone has lost a little bit, some have lost a lot, and a vanishingly tiny minority have won big, explicitly at the expense of everyone else.

And before you start with "well the market chose-" no, it didn't. The market followed incentives established by the market and those who regulate it. That's not a choice anyone or anything made, any more than it's a choice if a river floods it's banks and destroys a bridge.