“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” So said George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher who was a star Harvard professor before resettling in Europe and becoming an influential public intellectual. Santayana’s writings served as a guiding light during some of the darkest days of two World Wars and the near cataclysm of the mid-20th century—a fate that none other than Ray Dalio sees repeating itself in the near future.
So maybe it’s time for a quick history lesson about the first couple industrial revolutions, with the labor force going through what leaders such as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang have described as another one: the AI boom.
