As the above chart indicates, the economic growth we take for granted didn’t really get rolling until the 18th century and the Industrial Revolution. That upward curve was generated by a series of inventions and innovations that have had a powerful cumulative effect on our lives through the productive capabilities they made possible.
Vistage Speaker Marc Emmer suggests that the invention of AI in the form of ChatGPT is no different than the other great inventions of the past three centuries (e.g., steam, electricity, microprocessors) which ultimately, but rarely immediately, spawned innovations that created a standard of living that our ancestors could not have imagined.
However, he also reminds us that these innovations have invariably been accompanied by what economists have long called “creative destruction. ChaptGPT/AI will be the cause of enormous disruption in terms of disrupted or destroyed industries and job dislocation. But if history is any guide, they should be worth the cost.
Mr. Emmer’s recent article “How AI will unleash an innovation revolution” recaps where we’ve been, and where AI will likely take us. It may take a few years but as Arthur C. Clark who created the character of the artificially intelligent computer, HAL 9000 in his novel “2001: A Space Odyssey warned, “technological advances are vastly overrated in the short run…and vastly underrated in the long run.”
