AI’s Future May Be Written in Railroads’ Past: Adrian Wooldridge

The historian A.J.P. Taylor once quipped that the only thing people learn from the mistakes of the past is how to make new mistakes. But there are nevertheless many lessons to be learned if you look in the right places. Consider the extraordinary parallels between today’s AI boom and the 19th-century railway boom, parallels that are pregnant with both warnings and lessons.

The similarities between the railway and digital revolutions have always been striking. The railway revolution shrank physical space. The digital revolution opened and then organized cyber space. The railway revolution transformed every bit of the economy that ...