Joe Davis: AI as a general-purpose technology

Joe Davis: Could AI be as transformative as electricity? Can it change how we live? Health, happiness, and progress.

If we use technology and if we use that, innovation can be predicted. We just have to know where to look.

This is a future that very few are actually talking about.

Not all technologies change the world. Think of electricity and social media.

Both are ubiquitous. They're all around the world. But only one changed lives and propelled the global economy forward.

Why is that? Well, it turns out big technological advances—what economists call general-purpose technologies—they have two distinct dimensions: They’re innovative, and they’re transformative.

Innovative technologies change how we work. You can think of the assembly line, or you can think of the computer. Assembly line, having some automation for us to run faster, computers to generate new insights—what I call power tools. Power tools, they're complements to the work we do. We almost take for granted how important computers are in today's society.

But not all innovative technology is transformative. Transformation is different because it changes how we live. Electricity was transformative because it improved basic human needs. More importantly, electricity was transformative because it enabled knock-on effects in other inventions that, without electricity, they would just simply not have been possible.

So which one will AI be? Innovative? Transformative? And could—could—AI be both?