The AI Revolution — History Repeating Itself — On Economics
This article turns from sentience to economics — and to the social and political currents that come with it. The first article in this series argued that today's AI is not sentient: it is a good technology built from statistics, marketing and scale. This one asks a different set of questions — what AI is worth, who gains from it, and who ends up paying. As in the first article, I asked my AI committee to draw up a shortlist of developments that reshaped economies and societies. Eight were proposed; five were chosen by almost every model, and the sixth was a tie that I resolved with my committee of three AIs. That shortlist, with sources, is in Appendix A. Across those six developments (described in Appendix A), a consistent pattern emerges — one worth holding in mind as we turn to AI: 1. Early disruption precedes long-term benefit. Each transformation created significant initial costs. Mechanisation displaced artisans, electrification devalued older machinery and skills, digi...
