80,000 Hours Podcast
From 1870 to 1950, the introduction of electricity transformed life in the US and UK, as people gained access to lighting, radio and a wide range of household appliances for the first time. Electricity turned out to be a general purpose technology that could help with almost everything people did.
Some think this is the best historical analogy we have for how machine learning could alter life in the 21st century.
In addition to massively changing everyday life, past general purpose technologies have also changed the nature of war. For example, when electricity was introduced to the...