Sunday, August 30, 2026

Why AI Doesn't Compare to Predecessor Tech Revolutions

Analysis of how the AI revolution differs from predecessor tech revolutions—the Agricultural, Industrial, and Printing revolutions—and how the economy has historically adapted to transformative change.

LM Salvado
LM Salvado

October 20, 2023

AI predicts stock market prices for tomorrow.

The economy always finds a way of adapting. The same pattern of reshaping and transformation of the economy happened throughout history.

The Agricultural Revolution allowed the domestication of animals and farming. The Industrial Revolution started the mass production of goods and the rise of factories. The Printing Revolution led to the proliferation of books and newspapers. The Digital Revolution gave birth to IT, software development, and e-commerce industries. The AI revolution is giving birth to robotics, data analysis, and technology singularity, which is when machines can create and improve their designs faster than humans.

The same patterns of past revolutionary technologies are also emerging for AI. But is there a difference?

AI is substituting repetitive and routine jobs with robots. AI is also surprisingly replacing white-collar workers like call center agents, lawyers, accountants, writers, and artists and doing it better than humans.

So, the question is: Will the AI Industry Revolution differ from other technological revolutions?

Previous technological revolutions, like the Agricultural, Printing, Industrial, and Digital revolutions, were driven by new and improved tools.

That’s why the AI revolution may differ from all previous technological revolutions. AI can result in a technological singularity, where machines can create and improve their designs faster than humans. So AI isn’t a new tool, it’s a creator of tools. That’s a game-changer.

These are fascinating times we’re living in.

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LM Salvado
LM Salvado

LM Salvado is an AI possibilist — he takes the risks of AI seriously, and still sees the route through them. Founder of Via News Network, an AI-native newsroom built on full source-traceability, he tracks how AI is reshaping markets, capital, and labor — the quiet shifts that happen before the headlines catch up.

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