Further reading — What economic history can teach us about the AI moment
Companion to a talk at AI Engineer Paris (23 Sep 2026).
Sources
Opening
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity and Costs.
- Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, and Lindsey R. Raymond, “Generative AI at Work,” NBER Working Paper 31161 (2023); later Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Long-run growth
- Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Maddison Project Database 2023.
- Charles I. Jones, “AI and Our Economic Future,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 40, no. 1 (2026).
GPTs
- Timothy F. Bresnahan and Manuel Trajtenberg, “General Purpose Technologies: ‘Engines of Growth’?,” NBER Working Paper 4148 (1992).
- Martin Neil Baily, David M. Byrne, Aidan T. Kane, and Paul E. Soto, “Generative AI at the Crossroads: Light Bulb, Dynamo, or Microscope?,” FEDS 2025-053.
Steam
- Nicholas Crafts, “Steam as a General Purpose Technology: A Growth Accounting Perspective,” Economic Journal 114, no. 495 (2004): 338–351.
Electricity
- Paul A. David, “The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox,” American Economic Review 80, no. 2 (1990): 355–361.
Computers / ICT
- Stephen D. Oliner and Daniel E. Sichel, “The Resurgence of Growth in the Late 1990s: Is Information Technology the Story?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 4 (2000): 3–22.
- Robert M. Solow, “We’d Better Watch Out,” New York Times Book Review, 12 July 1987.
- Erik Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock, and Chad Syverson, “Artificial Intelligence and the Modern Productivity Paradox,” NBER Working Paper 24001 (2017).
CapEx (rail, telecom, AI)
- Andrew Odlyzko, Railway Mania papers (collected).
- Railway investment shares of British GDP, mid-1840s: Mitchell estimates as reported in Gareth Campbell et al. (≈5.7% in 1846, 6.7% in 1847, 4.7% in 1848).
- BEA / FRED communications equipment and structures investment series; Oliner & Sichel (2000) for ICT context. Peak telecom-related investment around 2000 on the order of ~1–1.5% of U.S. GDP.
- Goldman Sachs Research (2026), U.S. AI-related investment estimates (order of ~1.8% of GDP in 2026; higher in later-year forecasts).
Further reading
Essays
- Frank Schmid, “60, 30, 15, … 7.5? What History Suggests About Generative AI,” Gen Re (2025).
- James Pethokoukis, “The Dynamo, the Computer, and ChatGPT,” AEI (2023).
- James Pethokoukis, “How AI Is like That Other General Purpose Technology, Electricity,” AEI (2019).
- James Pethokoukis, “Some Lessons from Business History for the Emerging Age of AI,” AEI (2025).
- James Pethokoukis, “Can Artificial Intelligence Reverse the Productivity Slowdown? My Long-Read Q&A with Nicholas Crafts,” AEI.
- Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, “AI as Normal Technology,” Knight First Amendment Institute (2025).
Papers & books
- Iain M. Cockburn, Rebecca Henderson, and Scott Stern, “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Innovation,” NBER Working Paper 24449 (2018).
- Warren D. Devine Jr., “From Shafts to Wires: Historical Perspective on Electrification,” Journal of Economic History 43, no. 2 (1983): 347–372.
- Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002).
- Kevin A. Bryan, “The Economic Impacts of AI: A Multidisciplinary, Multibook Review” (2025).
- Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); also A Culture of Growth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
- Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023).
Audio
- Nicholas Crafts on AI and the next industrial revolution, The We Society.
- Andrew Odlyzko, Reuters The Big View (2024).