AI Is Proving a 100-Year-Old Prediction True
Keynes saw where AI might take us.
Photographer: Tim Gidal/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Great minds go off on odd tangents. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes took time out from thinking about the Great Depression, which was throwing millions out of work, to write a charming essay about the “economic possibilities for our grandchildren.” What would life be like a hundred years hence, he asked. His answer: The depression would prove to be no more than a temporary blip, economic progress would resume its benevolent course, but then the real problems would start.
The combination of innovation and compound interest would solve the problem that had dogged humanity since Adam and Eve: how to make ends meet. Our grandchildren would be able to meet all their material needs by working 15 hours a week. But this would leave what Keynes called “the permanent problem of the human race.” How to use the resulting freedom from economic necessity to live a good life — or as Keynes put it “how to live wisely and agreeably and well.”