AI is the new iron road

Over the centuries, there have been certain key inventions that have been gamechangers ..

Over the centuries, there have been certain key inventions that have been gamechangers, leading to revolutionary improvements and upheavals. There are obvious ones such as the wheel, the printing press and antibiotics, but the railways are often missing from people who write about the progress of civilisation.

Last year, the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington railway attracted considerable interest. In my view, it was the Liverpool & Manchester opened five years later that was the groundbreaking invention, but no matter. The anniversary led to widespread coverage and publicity that rightly reflected the importance of the development of the railways. The railway revolution took quite a long time, stretching over much of the 19^th century as the iron road spread across the world. Railways were hard to construct and the means at the builders’ disposal were scant with the result that picks and shovels, along with explosives, were the main tools. Progress was therefore slow and steady, but nevertheless ushered in a new world.

As I have frequently covered in my books, the railways were the catalyst which transformed society, taking the industrial revolution around the world and ushering in the entrepreneurial capitalism which brought about massive increases in people’s incomes and wellbeing. The railways changed everything. Journeys that previously took days now could be achieved in hours. The large railway companies that emerged were the biggest business concerns in the world, creating the first corporate structures. The railways themselves stimulated a supply line of equipment that was unprecedented and employed far more people than any other business. And as I often mention in my talks, fish and chips became Britain’s favourite dish because the railways attracted people to the seaside where they learnt about this wonderful concoction and then transported the fresh fish to the rest of the country, resulting by the end of the 19^th century in the establishment of more than 1,000 fish and chip outlets across the UK. And so on. Almost every aspect of people’s lives was changed by the advent of the railways.

There were, too, as we know many downsides about the arrival of the railways but that is a sidetrack in the argument I am setting forward which is that AI – Artificial Intelligence – is undoubtedly the invention that will underpin the next significant upheaval in the way we live. Like the railways which were the culmination of a series of inventions from the wheel and the rail to steam power and tunnelling, AI is the conjunction of various technological developments, bringing together communication and computer technology in an unprecedented form. The pace of these developments has been far faster taking decades rather than centuries and now, quite possibly months rather than years. Things are changing so fast that it is very difficult to take a longer, more relaxed view of what is happening.

When the railways were first built, there were concerns about their impact, ranging from the risks of boilers blowing up to making sheep in the fields black. While these concerns can now be dismissed with a smug smile, the worries about AI have much more solid roots. We have absolutely no idea where this technology is taking us, but we do know that it is being adopted and spread without any thought as to its potential impact. So were the railways, though there was quite soon regulation and monitoring which ultimately led to the safety standards that were adopted widely towards the end of the 19^th century. Finding the equivalent controls for AI appears beyond the whit of politicians today, especially as many countries are run by regimes whose specific ideology attempts to minimise the role of government. It is not too late, but it is very near midnight.

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