We have been wondering whether the AI revolution could be as impactful to the global economy as the Industrial revolution, and the invention of the steam engine, was.

As a reminder, and see below, the Industrial revolution between 1760 – 1840 catalyzed a dramatic acceleration in global GDP growth from +0.2% per annum trendline between 1500 – 1800 (post the invention of the Gutenberg printing press) to +2.0% per annum trendline between 1800 – 2020 - the world’s GDP per capita increased by a factor of 10x in this period.

We are now moving from the Information era (and the proliferation of knowledge workers) to a new Creativity era, where we have machines helping humanity push the boundaries of scientific discovery (new energy sources, new materials etc). Ultimately, this begs the question whether AI can unleash the next step function jump for global GDP growth to go 20% per annum. This is the potential exponential thinking that I have been pushing for in our morning meetings. By the way any acceleration in US economic growth from 2% p.a. post GFC towards 3% - 4% (let alone the above) would change the narrative around debt sustainability and the focus on fiscal deficits…

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Video Link: Andrej Karpathy — “We’re summoning ghosts, not building animals”

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