August 2, 2026
Steam dreams or AI screams?
Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?
Experts say today’s AI boom may be nothing like the Industrial Revolution — and commenters are fighting about who gets rich
TLDR: The article says comparing AI to the Industrial Revolution may be misleading: a giant jump in growth was much less shocking back then than it would be now. Commenters are split between “AI won’t move the needle,” “the rich will grab everything,” and “workers could wait decades for any payoff.”
The big claim in this debate is spicy enough on its own: some people argue artificial intelligence could send the economy into wild, Industrial-Revolution-style overdrive. But this post throws cold water on that fantasy. The author says people are using history a little too loosely. Back in old Britain, a year of growth that looked way above the average was actually not that rare. Today, asking for a 10-times jump in growth would be something far more extreme — less “we’ve seen this before” and more “this would be totally weird by modern standards.” In plain English: yes, history had a huge boom once, but that doesn’t mean today’s AI story automatically gets to copy-paste it.
And the comments? Absolute class warfare meets economic doomscrolling. One camp basically said, “What if AI doesn’t boost real growth at all?” with one commenter dragging the internet era into the chat as proof that shiny new tech does not always equal everyone getting richer. Another went full guillotine-energy, saying any gains will just show up in stocks, capital gains, and billionaire bank accounts. Others argued the real comparison isn’t steam engines but railroads, or that growth often comes from systems expanding into new territory, not from gadgets alone. The darkest hot take came from the jobs angle: sure, past machine revolutions eventually recovered, but after decades of pain. So the mood is less AI miracle and more: who exactly is this boom for, and how long are regular people supposed to wait?
Key Points
- •The article argues that comparing a possible 10× AI-driven growth acceleration today with the Industrial Revolution is misleading.
- •It states that in the UK before the Industrial Revolution, annual growth rates around 10× the compound long-run rate were relatively common.
- •For 1252–1652, the article reports a UK compound annual growth rate of about 0.07%, and says roughly 0.66% annual growth was exceeded in about 46% of years.
- •Looking at 20-year windows, the article finds a mean compound growth rate of 0.06% per year and says about 17% of windows exceeded roughly 0.6% annual growth.
- •Using a standard-deviation framing, the article estimates that an Industrial-Revolution-style acceleration in frontier economies today would imply about 2.8% annual growth, not growth above 20%.