Artificial Intelligence as a General Purpose Technology

AI is already part of everybody’s lives. The sooner we all understand how it fits in History, the better.

Everyday the subject of artificial intelligence and machine learning seems to become more ubiquitous and more complex at the same time. But one thing that might help us understand how it will affect us in the future is to look at other comparable technological breakthroughs from the past.

Given the novelty of the subject, it is easy to conclude that what we have ahead of us is totally unprecedented, and therefore really hard to understand. However, if we can frame AI into an understandable category that includes things we already know, we may be better prepared tackle the challenges and make the most of the opportunities that AI brings about.

General Purpose Technologies

GPT refers to technologies that have a high potential to drive profound changes in all aspects of the economy and society: from the production and consumption of good as services to the way we manage our lives and societies.

For a technology to be a GPT, it must fulfill three main characteristics:

1. Pervasiveness: It should be general and spread to most parts of our economy and lives

2. Improvement: It should get more efficient and more accessible over time

3. Innovation spawning: It should make it easier to invent and produce new things or processes.

One early example of GPT we can think of is printing: it is used everywhere, in business and personal contexts (1), it has improved over time (2), and it enabled other innovations to arise from it, such as mass produced books, newspapers, and print media (3)

In more recent times, we have seen other GPTs that had deep impacts on the economy and on society, such as electricity and information technology.

The fact is that even though AI is new thing in itself, it also fits into a larger, older context: that of GPT. And we can use what we have learned from the past to better understand what the future holds.

If you find this subject interesting, I highly recommend the book The Economics Of Artificial Intelligence, which you can download freely from here.