I am looking at a chart that tracks income per head over time. It is a more or less flat line between 1000BC and the late 1700s. To repeat, worldwide living standards stagnated for almost three millennia. Then: industrialisation. Incomes shoot up. The chart could be the ECG readout of a total goner of a patient who then makes an eleventh-hour comeback from death.
So, be doubtful when someone likens AI to the industrial revolution in importance. It will do well to match even the telephone and the incandescent lightbulb. (Incomes really surged as 1900 approached.) Perhaps the test of AI isn’t economic, though. Perhaps the test is quality of life. Well, before the phonograph, your favourite piece of music was something you only ever heard a few times, when an orchestra passed through town and fancied playing it. Before air travel, crossing an ocean was a Homeric saga. Now it is easy. AI will be as life-enhancing as these inventions, will it?