Comment by falcor84
There's nothing definitional about the economy being driven by human need. In a future scenario where there are superintelligent AIs, there's no reason why they wouldn't run their own economy for their own needs, collecting and processing materials to service each other's goals, for example of space exploration.
That's an interesting argument. I don't like it, but I can't prove it wrong, so maybe we're approaching a new era where this is true.
But we're clearly not there now, so I stand by my prediction for the medium future!