Every Technological Revolution in History Has Been Predicted to Bring Disaster

Every technological revolution in history has been predicted to bring disaster. They said the printing press would devalue knowledge, the telephone would destroy face-to-face communication, and the internet would dilute relationships between people.

Stanford University economist Charles Jones, in his paper "AI and Our Economic Future," proposed a "weak link theory."

This theory posits that any complex production process is composed of a series of complementary tasks, just like a chain. The overall efficiency of this chain is not determined by its strongest link, but by its weakest link.

In fact, it's quite similar to the barrel theory we often talk about—the limit is determined by the shortest plank.

This theory provides an extremely important perspective for us to understand what impact AI will have on the real world.

AI might increase the efficiency of certain tasks ten thousandfold, such as writing code, analyzing data, or generating images. However, as long as there remains a "weak link" in this production chain that cannot be automated by AI—for example, requiring humans to conduct complex offline negotiations, waiting for government regulatory approvals, or depending on physical construction in the real world—then the efficiency gains of the entire chain will be firmly constrained by this "weak link."

In other words, the impact of AI may be far less rapid and exaggerated than we imagine, but rather a more gradual process, tamed by various "weak links" in the real world.

The Pew Research Center also conducted a survey, where nearly three-quarters of respondents said they would be willing to let AI assist with their daily tasks, at least to some extent.

What we see is not a group terrified by AI. This is a group of ordinary people learning to coexist with AI.

I recall a friend who worked as a chef in a restaurant for over a decade and now runs his own restaurant in a hutong in Dongcheng District. I asked him if he ever worried about being replaced by AI. He thought for a moment and said, "What I worry more about is the rising cost of ingredients."

This is a very simple judgment about what one can control.

Technological development has never been a straight line. It is a tangled mess, containing fear, greed, accidents, resilience, and many, many ordinary people who, in every era, continue to live their lives in their own way.

Camus once wrote, "The greatest generosity toward the future is to give everything to the present."