Introduction

In this essay

The age of artificial general intelligence is not approaching—it is arriving. This series examines the economic, epistemic, and geopolitical consequences of the AGI transition through the lens of history. What prior knowledge can we bring to bear on a future that has no true precedent?

History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. —Attributed to Mark Twain

The Shape of the Transition

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The economic implications of artificial general intelligence cannot be understood without reference to prior technological revolutions.1 From the printing press to the steam engine, from electrification to the internet, each wave of general-purpose technology has reshaped not merely production but the very structure of knowledge and power.

Why History Matters

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A Map of the Series

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Each essay in this series addresses a distinct facet of the AGI transition. Token Epistemics examines how language models reshape what we know and how we know it. Inference Economics explores the cost structures and market dynamics of intelligence as a commodity. Reverse Black Death considers the labor-market consequences of a technology that augments rather than destroys the workforce. And International Consequences of AGI surveys the geopolitical landscape that AGI will transform.2

The Historian’s Advantage

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  1. See Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (2002), for the canonical account of how technological revolutions unfold in long waves. ↩︎

  2. The series structure deliberately echoes the organization of Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness (2024), though the analytical framework and conclusions differ substantially. ↩︎

  3. As Niall Ferguson argues in The Square and the Tower (2018), the interplay between hierarchical and networked power structures is the key to understanding how new technologies reshape societies. ↩︎

Next in series: I. Token Epistemics →