General-Purpose Technology

A general-purpose technology is Azeem Azhar’s borrowed name for a rare category of innovation that differs from ordinary improvements in kind rather than degree. Most innovations are local: they make one thing faster or cheaper and leave the rest of the world more or less intact. A general-purpose technology is different. It is so broadly applicable that it seeps into every sector, reorganizes how unrelated industries operate, and reshapes society for generations. Electricity was such a technology. So was the printing press, the steam engine, and the internal combustion engine. They did not improve existing activities; they became the medium in which all activities subsequently occurred. Azhar’s central claim is that artificial intelligence belongs in this rare company, and that the recognition has direct policy consequences: you cannot regulate electricity by writing rules for light bulbs, and you cannot govern AI by writing rules for chatbots. The effects of a general-purpose technology ramify in directions no one